enforcement and more involvement and more concerted effort to address this issue and to assist victims on all fronts those that if there is a civil prosecution and consumer protection in office for instance could prosecute italy under the maryland immigration consultant act that they could file motions and eliminate to protect the status of the immigrant complaint. ..

project is to balance those protecting, protecting from risk, those persons who, where one's immigration status is going to bear on their ability to exercise their rights, but also recognizing that those are some of the most vulnerable people and some of the people are being exploited, exploited the most, and so have the most recent to try to exercise those rights. at the outset of any of our cases, we do an analysis of whether, how is immigration status going to play a role. sometimes the fact that a client is undocumented is actually going to be an element of the civil rights of use. you will have an employee who has been sexually harassed for years or even sexual assaulted for years because the employer has threatened to turn them over

to ice, oftentimes what they will say. that will sort of beat somebody into submission, that sort of threat. we really keen on trying to make sure that we can give voice to those people, that at the same token, same time not putting them at some sort of risk that they don't, that they haven't consented to being in. >> any other thoughts? >> i would like to share with you a brief statement that i heard in the district court in maryland which is sort of the general level court. it's a domestic violence case in which i was the attorney for one of the people involved who was actually the victim and survivor in that case. and in that particular case, the opposing party had taken the

path course from this person and has been holding her passport -- taken for passport. threatened to call immigration in order to have her removed from this country. he is married to her, they have a child together. and the judge is not an immigration lawyer or immigration judge, not an immigrant herself, said in front of everybody in the courtroom, said i can think of no greater abuse that you could commit on a person than withholding her passport, threatening to have her deported, and taking away permanently from her child. how dare you. so when we're talking about these justice issues, there's a recognition that is growing among judges and legislators, not uniformly, but sort of rights and the remedies are out there. and even people who don't speak our language or don't seem to be

the same as us, people are starting to understand that immigrants are important people in this country and that the rights of immigrants should have, should be the same as the rights everybody has in america. >> thank you. i think that's a great note on which to end, and less -- great, wonderful. thank you all so much for being here. applause please are such an exceptional panel applau. [applause] >> by with introduction my name is juan sempertegui. i served as regional vice president hispanic national bar association. might region encompasses d.c., maryland, virginia and west virginia. this is the third time i'm saying this. this is the third conference and people think i'm joking but it's serious. in my three years of serving as president i get to finally to the practices and west virginia. so if you know of anybody,

please let me know. i be more to happy -- more than happy to connect with the. the hispanic national bar association was founded in 1972. we represent the edges of the latino professionals in this country. at the regional level clapboard for a closer with hispanic bar association d.c., maryland, virginia and as i mentioned, still searching for the west virginia contact. we do a tremendous amount of program at the local of a. one of which is we will be having a reception in honor of a judge in baltimore. she was recently appointed by the governor to be circuit court judge here that makes five judges within the state of maryland, there's still a tremendous a lot of work to do but you're all welcome to attend a reception held in baltimore. flyers are located in the front desk area where the materials are distributed. in addition, the region has partnered with the parts of to create the latino attorney

directorate. the director is going to be a publication that will encompass all that you attorneys are attorneys that speak spanish as well, to be listed on the publication as a resource for the community, not on the command as hell but also the legal community as well. into very much. be around and hopefully you will be able to also finally participate in the hnba national convention which will be occurring september of this year, and that will be in d.c. hnba as a partner and it will take place here september 10 through the 13th. i encourage all of you to attend, participate, and thank you for being here as well. >> good afternoon. my name is david krum. i'm president-elect of the maryland hispanic bar association, good to see you all out here.

a lot of what the maryland hispanic bar association does his partnership with local groups, local latino groups within maryland to really help out the latino community. we partner oftentimes with associations in maryland. it was recently a maryland state bar association group that helped out with local immigrant populations to further educate them on -- so they could become documented here, the united states. also maryland recently passed in january of this year, recently passed a law allowing those that are undocumented to obtain drivers licenses which is very important, certainly in maryland. about in 2006 when the licensure law changed and they tried without a license enforceable, i myself saw so many people all targeted for the tried without a

license law oftentimes what they would do, especially in frederick, and i spoke to some of the panelists earlier today about this very same issue, with the compact where local authorities would have the ability to get paid by the federal government to house detainees for immigration purposes, essentially what the local authority would do, so frederick would be a perfect example, what they would do is they would set a high bond on a normal driving without license case with a person shouldn't have even been arrested really. instead of $2500, long enough for immigration to put a detained on them, and then they are never getting out. so what we do is we try and educate the local latino community which in montgomery county, prince george's county is very large and very extensive, to educate them on local law changes, these opportunities so that they can become documented.

and we also partnership with local bar associations, for example, montgomery county, we have a local pipeline scholar where we try and get more latinos involved in the local bar associations and then also try and partnership with a large law firms in montgomery county to afford them the best avenue for the best career opportunities in montgomery county. i'm going to stick around so if you have questions, please come talk to me. thank you. >> good afternoon. i'm claire guthrie gastanaga. i have the president of serving as executive track of the aclu of virginia, and the special privilege of being your moderator for this panel today. as you can see we've got a lot of folks a lot to say, and so i'm going give very short introductions because their bios are in your materials and then we'll move on to getting the content out in front of you. the aclu nationally and in

virginia has been very active in working for equal rights for immigrants, from our perspecti perspective, immigrant rights are civil rights and we're happy to be in the forefront in many states including virginia and arizona and some of the other states where there have been a great deal of negative activity, you might say. in terms of helping, you know, sheriff joe arpaio and we have a very active border program that is staffed regional down in the southwest. so we are very much involved in these conversations, and the conversation we're going to have on this panel today is about the real world impact, what's really happening down on the ground in our communities. because with a broken immigration system that doesn't seem to be able to get fixed. our first speaker this afternoon is going to be mr. juan osuna, the director the second office for immigration review at the u.s. justice department.

he oversees the immigration court system around the country. he's more important for the purposes of this spill, he's been the justice department's representative to the process within the executive branch involving the white house and other federal agencies to try to get comprehensive immigration reform passed in congress. he is going to be speaking today on the current state of confidence of immigration reform legislation why it's important to the country, how it would affect the hispanic community and others, and our prospects for progress. he's also going to dispel some initiative that the obama administration have taken a part from us to make the immigration system more responsive to national needs and pretty. he is going to be followed i jaime farrant, executive director of ayuda, a nonprofit agency that advocates low income immigrants for direct legal, social and language services, education and outreach in the

d.c., maryland and virginia area. we were happy to welcome ayuda to virginia a couple years ago. and he will be speaking about the many ways that ayuda together with its clients faces the broken immigration system on a daily basis. sometimes it produces results that unite our reunite families and sometimes it brings long lasting peace. but many other times ayuda sees firsthand how we can keep families apart at risk and harm and in dire need of services. after he speaks, leslye orloff was big, director of the national immigrant women's advocacy project here at american university and she is an adjunct professor here. she's going to be speaking about the impact of the immigration system and its current rules and regulations on victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking. after she speaks, mr. peter

asaad who brings his insight both as an immigration attorney direct to representing families and individuals and businesses commend his expense as immediate past president of the american immigration lawyers association d.c. maryland and virginia to our panel. he will be talking specifically about the importance of access to legal representation by an authorized attorney, a representative perhaps the single most important factor in predicting a favorable outcome for noncitizens in the hispanic committee. and he will be followed by ms. leslye delacruz who is the managing member of -- advises clients to speak to operate across borders or required council as a result of cross-border activities. she is a past president of the hispanic bar association of the district of columbia. she's going to be speaking about the legal limbo many immigrants face, the effect on business and commerce, and with the hispanic legal community can do to raise

awareness and shape policy. she will provide real-life examples of what she's seeing in her law practice and place in the broader context the effect of our broken system on business and commerce. and, finally, james ferg-cadima, regional counsel for maldef which is the leading latino civil rights law firm in the country. he would argue. just teasing you. going to be talking, he's going to be batting cleanup for stickies going to bring us back to conversation about what's going on at the executive branch level in terms of immigration policy and we'll also be talking a little bit about what's happened on state legislation and litigation to impact all of these issues. we have a lot to do. and with no further ado out turn the podium over to juan osuna. >> good afternoon.

thank you, claire, and thank you to wcl for sponsoring this and for the other sponsors for putting this important program together. i'm going to start up just a little bit on where we'd been on comprehensive immigration reform, a little bit where we may be going, and then about some of the administrative measures that the administration has taken while we wait for what really is the important fix which is a comprehensive fix of our broken immigration system, and it is broken. you know, those from inside sit and also the outside see it as well. a little bit about what we started on this. really the work on track for, this go around, started right after the 2012 election. there was real groundswell recognition that the time had come, the time was past due, that the system needs fixing. soviet administration got to work right away in a very robust

interagency process led by the white house to try to put together some ideas and legislation that could be moving forward. that process was really much overtaken by the senate bill, well, you've heard very much many times referred to as they gang of eight, a bipartisan group of four republicans and four democratic senators that took it upon themselves to put together a comprehensive immigration reform bill that they could move forward. within very quick time the administration looked at the bill and decided that while it is not necessary the bill we would've written, it would sort hit on all the president's priorities in fulfill all the presents parties for immigration reform it so you administration very quickly shifted to a policy of supporting the senate bill and trying to do what we could to help us pass it to the senate. and, of course, it was a successful in the sense that the senate was able to pass the bill in a very bipartisan way last

june. and i pause for a second just to think about that process, because we often hear about how washington is dysfunctional, and certainly we wish that more progress had been made on a lot of areas, but what the senate did last you with the immigration bill was really an example of how capitol hill can work. those of you who may been watching on c-span and washing the judiciary committee markup of the bill saw a very open, very transparent, very robust discussion and conclusion, and liberation of the bill that led to its conclusion by then going to the senate for and then being passed again by the full senate. just to remind you what the four pieces of legislation are, and, obviously, it's a very conference ago, a very huge bill, but it's on for large areas that reflect why this is such a message of legislation. number one of course is the legalization program. finding a solution for the 10 to

12 my and undocumented persons in this country. nobody thinks that it is good policy to try to have some policy of mass deportation or anything like that. so what this and build it is a came up with a process that is meaningful, that is tough but that leads to a path citizenship for the vast majority of those individuals and it is something the administration fully supports. number two, work verification process. when you talk about immigration enforcement, most observers agree that the best way of doing this is actually at the workplace with a robust and meaningful and effective verification process that can work. there are a lot of details to that and, obviously, we're a time to go into all the details to what that actually would look like but that's the second big piece of immigration from those contained in the senate bill and that the administration is fully behind. number three is reforms to legal immigration system, why is that

important? because our legal immigration system, the system by which we select prominent immigrants and on immigrants for this country for work visas and things like that is woefully out of date. there are many copies they can find the workers they need. there are many workers who want to commit, many students who are here that they're not allowed to stay in this country. that doesn't make any sense. the senate bill and other proposals like it would fix that problem. it would also of course reduce the incentive to cross the border illegally. it are avenues for people to come in legally import, then that takes what an important incentive for undocumented migration to this country. then finally, the fourth big piece which any immigration bill has to have is the enforcement peace. largely focused, the senate bill largely focused on enforcement of the border. a word about that. the administration is certainly committed a huge amounts of resources for the border, and the border is more secure now than it ever has been. the senate bill does add to

that, but a bill that argues that the board is not secure and that needs to be secured first i think really are not looking at the reality on the border these days where the number of resources and enforcement at the border is really much more than it ever has been. and has helped to set the stage for hopefully for passage of immigration reform. let me mention a couple of other pieces to the bill that didn't get a lot of attention but the really important as for as the justice department goes, because while dhs brings a lot of the pure immigration equities to the debate, those at the justice department, we have some important roles to play with regard to informing immigration reform to make sure that it is as best as he can be. one area is the area of civil rights. serval rights division has been very active over the last few years -- civil rights. and other areas, and during the

technical assistance we're putting together to the senate bill, we've tried to make sure that programs like work verification, e-verify, the legalization program, order enforcement, were informed the best way possible. so that, for example, and work verification scheme we need to be very, very careful that somebody who does not receive an automatic, and work verification claridge right away is not disadvantaged and some civil rights way while the system is moving forward. that is a kind of civil rights concerned that we were able to insert in the bill and have a discussion with staffers and that we will continue to do going forward. the second area i want to highlight quick as the immigration court system which is what i don't see at the justice department in my day job, and the senate bill includes a very important reforms to the court system. not only additional resources which are just what we needed but some innovative council

programs for vulnerable populations appearing in the court system as well as restoring a fair amount of discretion to immigration justice that was taken away in the 1996 act. our attorney general is fully supportive of that and we think the system works better when judges actually have a fair amount of discretion they can take into consideration when somebody is appearing before them. the senate bill takes us at least part of the way towards destroying some of that discretion. in terms of the prospect for cir, the courts as you know it is currently in the house of representatives initially up to speaker boehner and the leadership team in the house to bring it forward. i actually to remain an optimist on immigration reform. i think the white house certainly believes there's still an opportunity to get something meaningful done this year. and the reason that i remain an optimist on this is because ultimately it's good policy. ultimately, i think there will be recognition even more so than there already has been, that the

system is in desperate need of reform and of the senate bill or something like it in a comprehensive and offers the best method for fixing that system. so i do think that it will pass at some point, and begin we do remain optimistic there will be some action on the issue, although admittedly it is getting more challenging as the calendar moves forward towards the end of the year and the november elections. a word real quick on some administrative procedures that the administration has undertaken. in the absence of immigration reform and legislative reform. and that also may be coming. we, of course, have tried, one of the things we try to do in the immigration enforcement system at least and the removal to try to focus on parties. in other words, if you start with a system that has too many cases and too few resources, what you do is you prioritize, prioritize on this case is that really should have the

governments attention in the first instance, and they involve public, threat to public safety, serious criminal activities, things like that. and try to de- emphasize those cases that may involve people that don't have a lot of criminal act every or really any criminal activity. it has been i think a sustained effort that we start in 2011 primarily with dhs with regard to prosecute to discretion with dhs was exercising more discretion in terms of the cases they sought to bring to court in order to get removal orders. while the numbers have not been huge they're having a fair amount of cases that have been closed out in our immigration courts through that process, and what judges tell me when i travel across the country is that the concept or the idea of discretion, the idea being selected in the kinds of cases that move forward is more ingrained into the system now than it was than it ever has been. that i think as a healthy thing.

it helps us focus priority is on this cases that really need to have that priority. of course, the whole issue of priorities and making sure that certain people don't, are not prioritize for removal reached the high point of years ago with the daca program. the deferred action program that the president announced for individuals who may be qualified under the d.r.e.a.m. act, people who were brought here as children and you remain here ever since. the daca program was a two-year suspension, program where people were suspended and it is coming up for renewal this summer. so we will see what the administration does with that. and a couple weeks ago, three weeks ago or so the president ordered a review of current enforcement programs to see if they could be done more humanely and with a further attention to the prioritization and maybe a shift of there. so dhs is conducting that review right now, and we will see what

that results in. finally, let me just mention some justice department initiatives that i think could bear some fruit, and will go a lot to the issue of fairness and due process in immigration proceedings. number one is that we're trying to move forward and we have move moved forward on some innovative council programs for people in immigration proceedings who are detained that are mentally incompetent, that have been judged to be mentally incompetent so that they can't defend themselves some speak in immigration court. and for the first time the department has appointed counsel for the small population, which while it is a small population, pretty significant in terms of the ground that it breaks because we've never done that before and we're looking at other populations not to see what we can do with it. secondly, we are engaging in interagency process with the department of homeland secured and others to try to increase

enforcement against so-called notarios, those fly-by-night organizations or individuals that do great, great damage in immigrant communities by promising people the world basically and not delivering. and that's been quite successful in putting some very notorious individuals out of business as well as our and also has a public education campaign that again has been quite good around the country. and then finally as we put the bag is at abuse were trying to make it easier for the good guys to step in and represent immigrants in normal proceeding. the regulation be coming up later on this year to make it easier for public interest organizations to step in and represent people through what we call the accredited representative program that the bia, court of appeals conducts, and we hope they'll have a significant impact in increasing the capacity in immigrant committees for people that have come out of going to the immigration system. and all these things are of

course are not small things but they are not the overall fix. these are things we can do to make the system a little better now, but really they need is significant and great for immigration reform legislation. so i do remain an optimist, and hope i don't have to wait too long. i don't think i will, but we will see what the rest of the year brings and i look forward to your questions. thanks very much. [applause] >> good afternoon. it's a pleasure to be here with you on this rainy day. and reminds me, last february when this conference was scheduled to take place and was counseled because of snow, and as, just before the snow postponed r. kelly, speaker

boehner had remarked there was widespread doubt about whether the administration can be trusted to enforce our laws are i think the sunday just before that, he forgot conference, senator chuck schumer stated to resolve the concern that speaker boehner had, what they would do, what he suggested, the house was bascom immigration reform bill now but not let it take place, start until december 31, 2070. and in his words, that would solve the problem. in action for three more years, in our opinion, respectfully i have to respect with senator schumer, it does not solve the problem. since then, we keep hearing more and more, nothing has moved in congress so far, and we keeping our immigration system is broken. in many ways i don't think it's broken. as we've heard by many this month, the obama admission will now deport its 2 millionth

individual. it seems be working quite well as we deport many people. .. the new york times reported that in the final year of the george bush administration 25% of those in the united states with no criminal records were

returned to their native countries without charges. in 2013 criminal charges were filed in 90% of those cases. when that happened this policy means deported immigrants at a minimum will not be able to return to their country for a lease five years. if they want to return they will face prison time in the united states. in that sense i agree the system is broken in the sense that it is not doing what the obama administration said, they're going they're criminals, gang the bankers, people hurting the economy, not after students or folks who are here to figure out how to feed their families. we agreed that is what we would like the system to focus on. unfortunately we don't see that. as to how the system is being followed last year we had 368,000 deportations in the united states.

how does that impact the latino community? 368,000, over 240,000 of them were mexicans. over 47,004 guatemalanss. 30,000 hondurans. 21,000 salvadorean. coincidentally those of the biggest latino groups in the d.c. metropolitan area. our communities are facing the brunt of the deportations. furthermore when authorized entry, for your low, the number of border patrol agents have quadrupled in the last ten years and with the u.s. senate bill that was passed, it is calling for further toppling of the number of agents in the border region. even the border patrol has had in the last three years to reduce commission guidelines so they can admit more people to the border patrol academy in order to comply with congressional mandates to admit more people. even with that, we are calling for more agents in the border

region. this has led to an agency in many cases, outside the law and in many cases, including u.s. citizens and devastating families along the way. of this leads to fear in the latino community. any interaction with authority is will lead to deportation and many people refuse or are afraid of going forward. backup for example. when that was announced in 2012 was estimated 1.1 million people will be eligible to apply for this benefit. and, roughly half of what was estimated have applied. and a recovering the complaint,

what was the immediate reaction from mitt romney at the time? if i when i am eliminating daca the retirement documented like give my information to authorities at that time? probably not. they make a decision based out of fear to come forward. affordability. many people we serve on a daily basis simply cannot afford the $460,000 in fees to register. that will be on top of other fees. to charge you. and 465 by 3 is not how much it will cost you. think of that as an exercise with the senate bill that was passed for comprehensive immigration blue float, and for a family of four, talking on

$4,000 in fees. that could be a price compared -- too much of a price to carry. third reason it failed to get as many people and rolled as we would have liked is false hope in the community. many people decided to wait for comprehensive immigration reform saying it is just a work permit. something better may come on the way so i would rather wait than pay all this money. finally pragmatism. if i know i am undocumented i can't afford it and already have a job in this country why would i spend $500 to get a work permit i don't really need. why the system doesn't work as we like for it to work, those are lessons we should take as we enact comprehensive immigration reform moving forward.

we see all these aspects, in particular fear is what we see most often that is crippling to the clients that we serve. one of those clients was one that i saw two or three weeks ago when standing in the front desk when a woman came in seeking legal assistance to divorce her abusive husband. she didn't give me her name, she is afraid to give me her name but i asked where did she live, i wanted to make sure she was eligible to receive our services which restricts us in terms of state of presidency of the person. somewhat frightened, she said maryland. defining limitations, we couldn't serve her because she is that maryland resident in her case. i then had to ask for her immigration status because i want to make sure i can refer her to a place where that will not be an issue in the state of

maryland so i asked her what is your status. she stared at me and after a few seconds of silence she only said one word. none. with that information i was able to provide her with resources she could call where that wouldn't be a concern but as she left my office, i was saddened at we couldn't help her even though we wanted to end had profession is that could help her end for concerned because i don't know if she was going to be able to obtain the help she was seeking. this is just one of many cases that we see on a regular basis and many of our clients come seeking relief from violence. many of them are undocumented. number of them have come through

our borders and are suffering abuse, fear, poverty, violence in their home countries and in many cases here in the united states combined with legal uncertainty. as much as we would like to see comprehensive immigration reform passed i see the we are all waiting for it. i can report we i seeing some action. the congressional hispanic caucus met with the secretary and presented in a six page proposals that would essentially stop deportations of most undocumented immigrants who would qualify for legal status under the senate bill that was recently passed. the memo presented by the caucus has a number of principles they recommended in the absence of reform. some of them are number one, refund daca to undocumented immigrants who benefit from the senate immigration reform bill.

this could potentially help stop families from being divided and permanently separated by the immigration system. however it doesn't help the 205,000 parents of u.s. citizen children that have been deported by july 2010-july 2012. second recommendation is extent in place for other types of undocumented immigrants. this could help a family such as one of our clients, names have been changed to protect confidentiality. edgar is undocumented and his wife, maria, is a u.s. citizen. they have two u.s. citizen dollars and currently provides a majority of income for the family and participates in the girl's school activities. however, because edgar entered without inspections to the u.s. over ten years ago he must now leave the united states to obtain legal permanent residents through his marriage to maria.

this is very stressful for the family and the uncertainty and fear make them hesitate to let edgar file his case. edgar came to the u.s. because he was the target of gang violence in his home country of central america. he is afraid to go back even for a short amount of time to complete his interview. the family obviously does not want to risk edgar's safety, don't want him to continue with the case. the measure just like what is being proposed for the congressional hispanic caucus. and the recommendations would allow daca recipients to enlist in the u.s. military and permit adjustment of status to trigger three and ten for immigration and finally it would also expand

humanitarian parole to recipient's. via a daca recipient my parents could benefit, and be able to remain in the country lawfully. some other suggestions the memo has, recommend limitation of deportations without hearing, restricted notice to appear too high priority cases and 287, which cast fear in the community and have done nothing to make the community more secure. as we wait to see whether the house passes immigration reform we are seeing how people in the latino community are rising up. last week we saw 50 actions occurring across the country calling for amendments to deportations. people have been fasting in national mall, congress and the white house for immigration reform. people are rising up finally and

begging for change and waiting for leaders to go up because we cannot wait any more. we're taking action and we keep hearing the system is broken, time to fix it if that is the case. does have an immigration system for the 21st century that is pragmatic, accessible and affordable for those that need to use it and can truly have a chance to succeed in our country. thank you. [applause] >> i direct the national women's advocacy project at american university and i am going to talk briefly about how important immigration reform is for women and children, immigrant women and children and i am going to be talking predominantly about some of the challenges and

opportunities for immigrant survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking that have come out of a series of policies issued more recently. ultimately a better fix for immigrant women and children is access immigration reform but i want to talk about the challenges for those of us and opportunities for improving the quality of representation for immigrant women and kids particularly immigrant victims of violence against women. starting off, immigration reform when you are talking about immigrant women and children, immigrant women by and large receive legal status through family members and one of the things that is really important, because of that they often become dependent on family members who then abused them and they end up trapped in abusive relationships. violence against women act and subsequent reauthorization of the violence against women act and trafficking victims'

protection act created remedies but what is great about immigration reform is it would be available to women as an option that would help them gain status without having to go through the trauma of telling and retelling the story of violence and without having to in some cases report abuse and cooperate with law-enforcement in other cases which is a huge deterrent to as you might imagine particularly the victims of sexual assault where reporting rates are quite low anyway and for immigrant women they are low as well which means you have victims of sexual assault in the workplace where they don't come forward, they do come forward and are not often willing to report which doesn't give them an avenue to legal status. one of the things that is important about immigration reform is it provides an opportunity for immigrant women to get their own status ideally through their own work, secondly potentially for a family member

and once they gain it is portable so they're no longer lost as farmworker women or a lot of women working and poultry plants in abusive work environment that they can't get out of. they come to work in the morning and don't know when or if they will never be able to leave or what time they will be able to leave and are subject to horrific abuse that came out of that and we see this happening for women in the poultry industry and throughout the country. so what happened is when we talk about how immigration enforcement has changed over alas ten years, when i worked years ago, found in the domestic violence program in 1985 representing hundreds and hundreds of battered immigrant women, almost all of those cases my clients would say if i seek help he will turn me into immigration. back in the day we basically don't think anyone was ever calling. we didn't think the perpetrators

were calling immigration but what happened is we found that as more and more dollars have been put in to immigration enforcement we are seeing a rise in immigrant women being turned in and what we're finding is they absolutely were always calling but now there's somebody sitting by the phone so there is enough resources for enforcement agents at the phone answering these calls. that is one issue that happens, we see its in employment based abuse and we also see it in family violence cases, perpetrator's absolutely are calling to try to get the victim turned in. the good news is, i am going back to juan osuna's presentation, there have been really good policies out of the department of homeland security in this administration. for example today there is the computer system that will tell us if an immigrant crime victim

has filed, which means if her perpetrator tries to turn her in and her case is already filed, dhs enforcement agents are supposed to look at that system and see they are hands-off for removal. if the victims file cases and if they find out about the case there is some protection against the perpetrator's retaliation, trying to get her removed. what we are seeing is how did this come up? these policies that help protect against that mean that the problem is the victim has to file a case, learn about the case and filed in and figure out a way to get there. i will talk about that in a minute. what happens is the other e shu is programs like secure communities, coupled with the

dearth of language access being provided across the country by many jurisdictions by local law enforcement ends up with victims being picked up in do will arrest, in rural nebraska. and they called police for help. the police show up, they don't speak spanish, they don't get an interpreter and so what do we find out that happens? to do you think interprets? in many of these cases, 10% of the domestic violence sexual assault and human trafficking cases the perpetrator is interpreting and no police reports made. in some of these cases victims end up getting picked themselves as the perpetrator. and fingerprints are taken and

verification just like everybody else. the good news is if she had found her way to an advocate or attorney before and filed the immigration cases dhs is considering those fingerprints as if she is a u.s. citizen and she gets released just like if local law enforcement -- and treated as if she is an undocumented immigrant, if she -- there are two ways to try to not be detained, and domestic violence and the other is telling dhs she has children because there are very good policies issued by this administration, requiring dhs to screen for children of u.s. citizen and primary caretaker children, and dramatic differences is an advocacy

challenge. and immigrant crime victims, and my office or your office or whatever, one of the first things you tell her in a domestic violence case is if you are stopped by dhs the most important thing to tell them is you have children. and a variety of policies, she will be released pending -- she is not detained and can take care of her kids and if there is an immigration case that goes forward there's a way to defend it, and so on. and they filed their cases, it is harder and is a problem, most of the clients advocates tell this to if you are an undocumented women and dhs stops you without a license and ask whether you have children, you have undocumented children, in her mind the logical thing is to

not admit she has children and when we look at the postal case, the women who lied and said they didn't have children got deported and the women who admitted they had children were undocumented ends up with two visas. the policies are in place but the reality is we are advocates and lawyers have to find an act or react, filed as soon as possible. it presents a new -- i do a lot of training for people in the domestic violence movement, and the domestic violence movement since the 1980s, the to advocates in that movement, the first thing we think about when a victim comes to us is safety. and safety from many advocates translates into protection orders which used to work kind of, sort of but the problem is if you file a protection order before the immigration case the

moment you serve the perpetrator with a protection order what does he do? he calls and turned into dhs so it is a real challenge for spending a lot of time and energy and resources from the department of justice, office of violence and unemployment to train all the domestic violence and sexual assault and victim advocates to change their practices and file the immigration case first. what sounds good, then the problem because there are not enough lawyers to file those cases as juan osuna and others have talked about. what we are doing in the movement is trying to train advocates to screen for the cases where you have to have a lawyer, victims with prior arrest, victims across the border multiple times. there are a lot of cases that are pretty straight forward and with good resources and support from the technical assistance

the national women's advocacy project provide can actually walk and we have done it, and the kids in alabama and smaller communities walk them through filing of the cases so that the advocates can do simple cases and lawyers in the community can do difficult cases so they are not wasting precious legal resources on cases that are not complex. so the issue is there are a variety of policies out there that can work to help immigrant women and children and immigration reform will make it even better. but what happens is it requires advocates and attorneys to be accessible and to be able for victims to access them for help because what happens is non english-speaking victims from research we've done nationally has shown that the good news is not english-speaking victims find their way to advocates and

attorneys they actually get protection orders and get immigration relief. and it is successful. many of those advocates and the protection order context over two thirds of them didn't know what a protection order was when they showed up with the program to get help so advocates and attorneys were the key to making the laws that were on the books work for immigrant survivors and one of the other places it plays out is not only keeping people out of the tension so they can take care of their kids and find a path to lawful permanent residency for in many crime victims is available in the law but also we are seeing it played out in custody court. we have situations where a lot of times there are not interpreters or interpreters are provided in the long language and we end up with two things. one, family court judges testify

with a perpetrator representing them and the victim not, trying to decide and making really bad rulings on what immigration law is and basing their family court decision on bad rulings of immigration law. in that context women are losing, women are losing kids, custody of children because the court believes the perpetrator, i need custody of the children, is a total lie. as a matter of immigration lawyer and file without regard to whether you have custody but the judges don't know it. but the tools and material that educate judgees and another w c l grad, are providing direct technical assistance to judges and family courts so they can get real in for immigration law and prevent the split of families happening or wrong

decisions that award custody of immigrant children to perpetrators or the worst case scenario ending up on parental rights and immigrant parents, and an opportunity to resent -- represent themselves. the good news on that one and i will end on this note is an amazing ruling out of the nebraska supreme court, and teaching from guatemala, rights have been terminated. determination for parental rights and custody proceedings the constitutional right to care and custody of children applies to immigrant parents ordered detained, deported or undocumented. the court cannot enter into an exercise of comparing what the court might envision, it is better to be raised as a u.s. citizen in the home of non

latina u.s. parents rather than being at home in guatemala. the court says that is not a part of the parental, not part of this interest determination, shouldn't be a comparison of culture when you have a fit parent who may be deported home but the parent should have a right to take their kids and the parental directives present them from being deported if they are not high priority are otherwise and allows parents the time they need to take their children with them and get passports and things of the u.s. citizen child can come back later on if need be. there's a lot happening that is good but a lot of need for good advocacy to make those work and immigration reform will make this a lot easier in general. [applause] >> as clare mentioned in the

intro, in my intro, the single most important factor in predicting a favorable outcome for immigrants in the hispanic community or any community is representation. access to representation. what does that mean? access to representation, more than half of all persons in immigration proceedings lack representation. more than half. for detained immigrants it is even more than that. the available data demonstrates immigration respondents with counselors significantly less likely to abscond as well. if you are worried about's saunders, people who don't show up at immigration proceedings, they have representation, they won't abscond.

the government accountability office found applicants who had lawyers were three times as likely to be granted asylum. asylum. as compared to those who did not have representation. now, counsel also is important because without counsel, immigration courts are going to suffer under a greater burden of cases where immigration judges are explaining the rights to immigrants. and right now if you go to immigration court you ask for an individual hearing, you get a date in 2017 in a lot of instances. perhaps that is my experience and many other attorneys experience these days, it is an overwhelming system where there are cases and again that brings up two important points, two important points.

one, if you have access to representation and increase access to representation for these individuals, you help the efficiency of the courts. second, if you increase access to representation, you are going to improve their chances of getting a favorable outcome. ..

is a skipping abuse. she comes in the country and she gets access so readily available. available. he's a sellout and asylum application. it's how you get your employment authorization. she thinks that is going to get her legal status. when the application is denied she gets a notice to appear in court. and she has good intentions here. she does appear in court. they say you have a privilege, it is your privilege to get an attorney we will reschedule your case. it's not a right at the government's expense but we will

afford you that time to obtain a council. the supreme court first of all said that immigration proceedings are civil in nature and not come in all and they also say that you are allowed a council and it's not a right where the government must pay for this council but she goes to that council and then she comes back. she couldn't get an attorney that she could afford and actually, the case file by the prosecuting attorney come at a d government attorney did not have the case file. so the judge said we will give you another chance to get your counsel to give you more time.

so, tim passes and a notice is sent again that says we are rescheduling your appointment because of the schedule conflicts say they reschedule the appointment. and she never hears back. that doesn't make sense. while i will explain that in a moment. she doesn't go back to the proceedings but she does file application. it devotes a lot of information about the case and something and attorney would do. jumping ahead ten years, she gets pulled over on her way home and she has a broken tail light.

a situation where it empowers the state anstate and local auto look into the violations. in this situation when she was pulled over, the officer looked at her information and found that she had a warrant for deportation. because ten years prior when she didn't go to court, she actually -- there was a notice but she didn't receive it and when you don't go to court ordered deported in your absence. so she had an order of deportation without full due process. now, she had two children at home and they took her to detention. the pair into the school for that u.s. citizen children are trying to figure out where the

mother is and they go from parent to parent at the school to take care of the children. a neighbor calls me as an immigration attorney and says can you help. she is indeed hunching and one of the barriers or obstacles to representing someone in detention is transfer into one facility to another that is probably the greatest barrier. the department of justice has been doing a lot and one of the things they have been doing is to improve the transfer policy where there is an attorney that has the representation of the individual. and in this situation, had a policy existed perhaps she wouldn't have them transferred

so much. it's been done quite well and is also improved another barrier which is finding the person. how do you find a person do you get on the phone and start calling? now they have a locator system, an online locator system for the detainees and you can access that online right now by going to the website. and that is another administrative fi fix so there e administrative fixes that are very important in things that can be done but it wasn't done at the time. so the neighbor calls me. we try to locate her and discover also another fact she's pregnant. so she's in detention and she's pregnant. this is another policy that changed recently where they are trying to give discretion and

perhaps in situations where the mother is pregnant with the child. that's a situation where there is a health concerns of the family unity family unification is something we need to preserve as a foundational aspect of any immigration reform. i'm sure that you want to hear the end. speeding up a little bit, we try to represent her and we also get her case before the "washington post" and when it did a senator read her case, read the article i should say and after reading the article calls me. it was on my cell phone they called me, so i get a phone call saying this is a senator so and

so how can i assist because i read the article in the "washington post." and i said call the director of ice get her out and this is right before christmas. she gets out the next day on an ankle bracelet and this brings up another important point. alternatives to detention. they're all our candidates to detention. there are ankle bracelets. that's virtual detention. where you could be at home and you aren't going to be abused at the detention facility where there are health risks and family unification tearing families apart. we haven't gone far enough with the detention if one of you want to try to do more research and get more data and try to put it out there and educate the public about alternatives to detention that is something that would be

important. it's a very long story but i'm going to get to the end as to what happens here she gets out and that is a great part of the story but through the request and the attorney helping her in the case how did she get a favorable outcome in the end? we did notice there is a notice in her file. it's still sealed in an envelope that says returned to the sender and it was her address. it went to her address but it was returned by the post office so it was actually never receded by her and threw an appeal to the circuit it gets renamed it and the case gets reopened that now we need relief. how do we get relief? the window is closed for tps. but in that file we find another

gem. we find that when she did a flight back in the day, there was a request and then there was a change of address request. there was a request of evidence that was sent to her old address and there's proof there is a change of address before the government sent a notice of the change for the request for evidence. so it was error by the ins and so we got under for the ability to say to get the case reopened. so in conclusion, she is back with her family, she is in legal status. there are barriers to the representation i try to point out some of those barriers and the importance of representation and the importance of effective advocacy and i think in the

story that i hope it's helpful d puts a face on things. certainly the current immigration policies can affect the community very significant significantly. [applause] >> i won't spend too much time since i want to make sure that i give jim a little time to sum up and tell his point. but i just want to go over as you heard from all of our panelists there are a lot of roadblocks and barriers that although there has been a lot of progress in terms of this administration's policy they are still at a roadblock and barriers and all of us have an effect on our economy. you've all heard the numbers, so i'm not going to repeat them enough not only the numbers, but

the economic figures of the latino community in this country and with deportation with people not having the ability to work it's costing us millions if not millions of dollars. and another issue that this touches upon is we are supposed to focus on the latino community is the specifics and something that has the president we try to sort out look into the specific issue that this raises for the advancement of latinos in this country not only to raise their children and families and live healthy and happy lives and, you know, the pursuit of happiness and all that but also that involves advancing the professional. not only what they are career level and they are very extremely highly educated and do not have a degree, the skilled workers. that's something that this country promises to all and we are not necessarily keeping our

promises to the american dream in that regard. so i want to focus a little bit on the sort of economy and the professions since a lot of my practices focus on business, business immigration. i want to just point out a few quick facts about for folks who do have some sort of prospects in terms of the visa coming here and things that have helped make this country the great country that it is today in terms of immigration, you know, the future albert einstein that comes here. especially in this area we have lots of people that come here including from latin america who are postdoc. they are barriers for them as well. they need to go home and they need to go attend an important conference, something vital for the advancement of their caree careers. the policies today to make it very difficult for them. we have individuals who won't

leave the mechanics leave to attend these conferences if there is something happening at home they can't leave. in addition there is persons who are married and have families and because they are career, they need that other income from the other spouse or that other family member and for some of these categories, that is not possible. so that's something else that yes these are the individuals in a better place and some of the individuals we have heard about tonight. but all of this again takes a toll on the economy and the advancement of our community as well as many other immigrant communities. i also want to point out that it's very difficult for a lot of these folks and especially latino businesses tend to be

small businesses and it's hard for them to obtain. if you don't work for the large multinational it's hard. the categories are very limited. so i think we don't hear about this a lot, because the consequences of this is that when there are no options for family members and say in the sense of not for the business visas but in terms of that other types of immigrants that we have heard of here that are married to a u.s. citizen, some of them are actually choosing to go back to their home countries and starting their businesses there so we are seeing a lot of that and it's taking a toll on the economy. and in some cases that we have read about recently, the u.s. citizen is no longer renouncing

citizenship and we no longer have that tax base so that's obviously small but a growing number and so that is going to take a toll on our economy. but the news isn't all bad. i just want to touch on a few points that some of my colleagues here. the jury is still out and there are not issues and we haven't had enough people apply so i wanted to tell you about a success case in my office of a young individual, promising individual appointed by the governor of the state's commission. in the normal | environment in the past he would have been a prime candidate for the bill because he's just an amazing individual. but, you know, that's not the normal political environment of today. but he has applied and he has received it and he can work now and he coming you know, it is something that a lot of immigrants it just makes a

complete difference in their lives. but it's still in legal limbo. if we don't get comprehensive immigration reform, we don't know what is going to lead to. it's sort of creating ibb did well create a second-class sort of community here in the united states because there are people who will not be able to have the path to citizenship and they will be stuck in limbo forever. that's not necessarily the type of environment that we want to create. i flew in from germany last night and they had in their immigration law there are actually a lot of people who cannot ever have a path to citizenship to be and if that's something we want to create here we are going to see that with some people in the audience we will have the same issue here that we see in certain communities and in europe with

sort of an underclass of people who are living segregated in their own communities and are not sort of a part of a society in those countries. and the ramifications for society there are terrible. so to wrap it up, i want to talk for two minutes about what you can do. when i was president i learned so much about what an organization can do. we have the current president here. the goal and the mission is to advance not just latino lawyers for the community to educate the latino community. and that is something that's vital as many of my colleagues and i have said it is vital because without education in the community, people will not come out of the shadows. people will be too scared and they will not learn their rights. so i will encourage all of you to get involved, whether it is

volunteering at the organizations here in the representatives tonight. there is something that everyone in this room can do. you are very privileged in terms of the opportunities that you have here and it is definitely our responsibility to do this for our community and to help advance them and advocate for them. so, the community education is the key. like peter mentioned the alternative detention doubts many immigrants know about that as leslie said without telling the women these stories all the things that the community doesn't know about. it's up to you to try to spread the word and you can do it through these organizations. they have a public service committee, and that is the essence of what they do. so, again, good advocates and the facts is what will help our immigrant community commanded is up to us in the room to make

sure that we bring that out and about our community is hoped. [applause] >> good afternoon. first of all thank you to all of the hispanic bar association's for putting this conference together. what i would like to do with my time is provide a connective thread to what everyone has offered before. to really point out why this is truly an important issue for that community both those of us here and around the country that have licenses and for those of us that care and advocate in other ways so let me make that case. we are a legal defense fund and we advocate on behalf of the entire community that includes citizens and immigrants but when we take a look at the immigration side of what is needed for our community we have to use high impact models that include litigation and

legislative and regulatory reforms comes to let me walk you through some of those interesting choices. these interesting opportunities that we have on the horizon. there is a reality. forget that the numbers. forget about the numbers that we make up a greater share of the 11 million undocumented in the country. forget about the numbers that we make up 97% of the 2 million who've been deported recently. forget about those numbers. what matters is that we live in the communities and families that is a mixed status. some of us are citizens and many of us do not have any form of immigration. so what does that mean? when they did a poll in 2011, nearly one in four latino families, the citizens included, know someone personally that has been removed or deported. that is one in four of us. so this isn't political correct personal.

they debase and the choices on what we ask is personal to every hispanic in the country and that includes voters. let's take a look. we have an interesting debate where we are being led by our young people. undocumented student students, , potential beneficiaries that has been around and pending for decades have outshined us all. they have used every social media. they are not afraid and they've organized and they are leading the movement. they are leading the discourse. they are leading the moral argument behind the immigration reform committee have pretty much through other efforts broken into two camps. so this is interesting sort of choice in front of us and today. hashed out we cannot wait versus hash tag not want more. we have those of us that are in front of congress asking for congressional action putting the national spotlight on the speaker in the house for the congressional action. and then we also have a group of people that are on a hunger strike in front of the white

house putting pressure on the administration to do more administratively. what i offer is we don't need to pick one or the other. we have work to do both in front of congress and in front of all executive branch agencies to do that and including our ports systems. so let's talk about some of what was offered before. juan did a great job of walking us through the comprehensive immigration reform. i agree with him that we should be optimistic. optimistic for and cautious at the same time. a window is narrowing. the work along with all of the other latino national organizations in the national hispanic leadership agenda, we weighed in on every detail of every piece of the 1200 pages thathat wasn't built. we looked at all 300 amendments and every line and we waited. on behalf of the latino community, we were our own best advocates. we tried to get the best deal that we could. the bills were not perfect. the bill is tangible and sizable but what do we know on the house side? we know that there is a group of

eight in the senate. there is a group of eight in the house. whereas the house unfortunately has broken up. they have been working for years actually since 2009 quietly trying to find the consensus by the partisan efforts. there's a ton of legislative taxes that have been drafted and it's not been made public so our challenge in the days and weeks to come is to make that product public so we can comment and in proof. it's not going to be as good as what is coming through the senate, but it's something. we need something and we need it now so let's look at what we've got. we know the speaker has announced that there will be no conference. so the senate bill is almost all not a place where we are going to start. we actually have to start again with the house bill. so we look at that and we have a lot of political theater. where the senator has provided 1200 pages of text that house has only provided one-page. a few months ago, the senate caucus met in maryland in the retreat and provided one-page as a result.

so we have a sense of where we are headed in the days and in the weeks to come. what we do know is that there is a lot of overlap between what happened in the senate and what happened or what might happen in the house. the consensus there, many of the points previousl previously whee but what is missing? what we need to pay careful attention to is what is outside of those four corners of that one-page. in that one-page there is a call for letting the executive branch discretion on immigration. that is the whole point of the debate. we need the executive branch to use this enforcement power, to use the discussion. as we have to pay attention to that in the house. we are asking immigrants to admit culpability through a civil wrong. so how we administer that to the process will be a tough question. what we do know from the house is they will have to have developed proficiency in english far earlier than the naturalization. and how we deliver adult education and adult civics will be a premium if it comes to

pass. let's talk about it. the legal representation that peter pointed out. the reform many folks pointed to are not interested in the one-page. in the reforms that were either would've to are not present in this one-page and in the role of the state and the local enforcement, post the arizona decision of the supreme court as well be a part of the debate and that is missing in that page. there is a lot that is repetitive, so we have worked before the congress as a community but we also have to work in the meantime with the administrative relief. let me point to an example of where the administrative relief has been done right, not perfect but it is creatively done. let me point to an example where different branches of the executive branch are working across purposes. so, the law model of what is to come very i think that it should be applauded for pointing out all of the reasons people have not applied for the preproduction for the arrivals. what we actually make a defense of how the docket has been administered within the agency, within the department of

homeland security that shows that they are doing things on a daily and a weekly basis to make that affirmative program better as they learn and they get feedback from those that have applied and those are afraid and haven't been able to afford to applied. let's talk about it. some important things is that the dhs actually is working with other agencies which is rare created seems counterintuitive but they are working at the department of labor in the department of education on these issues to get the immigration reform should it come to pass. the applicants for the relief are going to have to have a presence for some sizable amount of time. i don't know about you but i don't keep every receipt of every transaction that i do when i purchased my copy. but it comes down to the work that peter would do representing people individually comes down to proof. so we have to take a look at how we think about the proof of the continuous presence, the department should be applauded for engaging the transcript creators and generators. this law school, undergraduate institutions, high school.

there was a deluge of requests one of the best pieces to document the presence for young people. older adults and those on the nutrition systems there are additional challenges. in school what does that mean for the specific divisions? there was an affirmative efforts to take care of the migrant students and to include adult education and literacy programs and education to make sure that the legal tests are demonstrably affected and mean something. so it's next the program albeit not permanent, something that is more likely in the population that could benefit to applied. i agree the best estimate were the largest estimate that we heard on who would benefit was on .9 million the data shows we have roughly 500 people either approved or that are pending in the process. one in four people that in theory could apply and have not. and for all of the reasons that were pointed out.

let's talk about a progra progrm an effort of the administrative relief that is working across purposes between the agencies. there is an affirmative growth in place of the relief for the deep end and of those serving in the military. if the spouse is undocumented in theory there is a way to provide a discretionary relief. the problem is we also have many branches of the military that have regulations that prevented the enlistment. so if you are a u.s. citizen and you are enrolling in the navy come if you are enrolling in the marines and possibly the coast guard, technically, you can't because you are married to coming in under the legal construction from the defense, the department and these military branches, you are harboring. harboring. as a marriage has been legally construed as harboring. that is a problem so there's a disconnect between the release in going forward and what is the military sister agency doing or not doing so there is a lot of work to be done with the administrative relief. let's talk about what is happening in the states. we had the arizona decision striking down the 1070 couple of

years ago and there has been a lot of litigation where the comforting litigating groups we had worked alongside to strike down some of these anti-immigrant clone laws that include bentley in alabama and kate lee south carolina and many others. those are kind of quietly wrapping down. ..

mold of represents the bar association, undocumented lawsuits and allies the in law school today in a long time ago. what we do know is when the high court of florida and the high court of california was confronted with these representatives -- questions, they came out that 1996 immigration law construed as our law licenses as public benefits to i don't know about you. i've never pay too much or any public benefit. it seems counterintuitive but that's the legal conclusion. doj entered the case in a way that was not helpful. every one of us, another example where the executive branch is working across the movement. let's think about it. we've got to clean this up. both the high court of california and florida offered is the need to be legislative enactment in states. california quickly passed a bill to allow undocumented graduates of california schools or

applicants to the california bar who are undocumented to get their law licenses. florida would just had opinion of you weeks ago will address the. there's work ahead of us. we get a good immigration reform as direct representation a little bit we have to think of high impact ways me with a law licenses and those that care about immigrants can do things. think of creative solutions. there's been translations on the table. we need to think of community as growing models. we need to thank ways that we can create instruments where we can create for people to play. microlending and loves. local bar associations, what is holding many daca applicants back is paying the 400 some dollars fee. we can give our money away. we know under problem we can set of instruments to get the money a way or loan money a way. there are so many applicants that we work with ed boyer that

his work with who have a pending dock application but they do not have the filing fee. let's get creative as the legal profession a let's solve some of these. thank you. [applause] >> my colleagues have done such a good job that we been able to reserve some really good time for questions. i want to follow-up just starts off by talking more about daca. in virginia, daca students were able to get drivers licenses because we have a statue this is people with deferred action can get licenses but only for the period of time that they are legally lawfully present. but our daca students have been able to qualify for and state residency because they have not been considered by the state at least to this point has been able to establish domicile. i wonder if you all have come across other kinds of examples of situations in which daca

students are disadvantaged even when they have gone through the process and been able to get status authorized? does -- the justice department has been careful or the administration has been careful to say at least to this point that daca isn't the status, and that sort of hang up on some of this stuff. does anybody want to answer my question? >> i think if i can start, i think in d.c. we'll see this happen. there was a driver's license bill passed that will take effect i believe on me first if i'm not mistaken. but it creates a special type of driver's license so it's not that all people would be able to have the same one document. that will be an issue probably for doctor recipient. i am personally concerned of discrimination happening when people going carry out a driver's license that is different, and so that's just one more issue of concern at least your locally.

>> virginia and when we did our driver's license when in effect in january 2004, we fought off a proposal to something that distinguish the driver's license of the people who are here with authority but temporarily. by having small little codes like the codes that say you have to wear glasses. but we were fortunate because the statute already said people with deferred action could get a license. i'm not sure if it hadn't said that we would be still, wouldn't still be questioning whether doctor students could get driver's licenses. >> your question goes to daca, a new legal status of some sort, and what does that mean? is an issue of first impression. that does work in ways where we will have anti-immigrant electives that will try to legislate daca in a way that frustrates intended purpose. but it's also an opportunity to

think about where ways to legislate where needed wisely both at the state and local level to enable daca to be more than just a driver's license. for it to mean professional licensing, or it can mean other important transactions. many sympathetic folks have the same question, what does daca mean? what cannot or can i not do? we've come across this post with college administers. the undocumented student last fall now all of a sudden has daca no question can those private grants, can the private scholarships to attend a live in the dorms? those of the questions we've been trying to put out as they popped a. not a phone call small death but there's something that lead to affirmative engage those who want to know. there are sympathetic allies we need to engage better. the other thing is specialist in state legislative caucus meets i think next week in utah where they're taking up a specific have to think about creative ways to legislate so that daca means more at the state level. we have allies.

it's not all anti, we need to take advantage of those pro-immigrant opportunities. >> driver's license are not only problem for daca students, battered immigrants in the process of laying, the only state in the u.s. that recognizes the documentation that the victim gets shorter for conversation, and so it's a huge problem. it's gotten better by the fact that between november and january of 2014, november 2013 to january 2014, dhs got rid of the backlog so that no processing cases to work authorization for six or seven months. but the point is it's a huge problem for immigrant crime victims as well. the last thing i want to say is that the other issue we been working on, another opportunity for people to think creatively, is a lot of daca kids have been

crime victims. and so, and that the college administers and the high school, college advisors and high school advisors and all of us have an opportunity to try to inform these kids about what is the petition, what is special immigrant juvenile status so that they can actually, for those of them the qualified might want to consider coming forward about the abuse so they have a path to legal permanent residency now and not have to wait. >> that's the key. deferred action doesn't get you on the path. it just hold you in limbo. as i think if you can qualify for a real status, then you should try to do that, even if it means acknowledging you've been a crime victim or victim of domestic abuse or sexual assault of one of the things that qualified you. we do have a problem in the commonwealth of virginia that

are licensing laws are not adequate to allow all people who are here lawfully even to get licenses. and that's a problem. currently our dmv doesn't accept any aid as evidence that you were able to be here legally. >> anybody else have a comment about that? no. then let me ask, let's go back to the deportation issue. there seem to be two points of view. one is that the obama administration is deporting people who are not dangerous to the community or people who have been convicted, or even arrested on serious crimes. and yet you here at the same time that we are using our resources effectively and more conscientiously than that. what's really going on out

there? >> i'll take a stab at that. i think there are different views of that obviously. "the new york times" highlighted the fact, over all in the five years there's been certain number of deportations and let's keep in mind that the real effort with regard to prosecutoprosecuto rial discretion and programs like that began late 2011 and really was trying to the implement in 2012 and last year. so it is a system that office has had a lot of history and a lot of momentum for longtime. and to use an old metaphor, you don't change, you don't push the direction of an ocean liner quickly. i will say that just from what i've seen in the court system and so a lot of the work we've done, there's been a shift, but there is more of an emphasis now on people that have serious criminal convictions, and other high priority cases.

is it perfect? no, because the ocean liner and algae, but i think that is it is undeniable that generally speaking the trend is towards higher priority cases even the when you look at the snapshot over all of the five years it's a much more mixed picture. >> i just want to add that there's constant news coming out of the government is at least our experience in working with dhs is constantly trying to improve. so, foso, for example, there was degradation gathered recently about courthouse enforcement. i was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago with ahead of your own advice the basically said, i guess about a month ago, it's in writing someplace, but basically ice has changed, not cbp, a whole other issue but i this change is all approach to

courthouse enforcement and they have agreed to only go after high priority targets, only go after individuals, not ask any question to stop anybody who are with those individuals at courthouses, it did not do any kind of broad sweep or anything like that like they made a dent in the past. so that's a huge improvement. they have also agreed, because they have developed training on confidential and not enforcement around the thames at courthouses to mandate. there in the process of trying to mandate that program to enforcement officers. so you have an opportunity during the end of this administration to continue to make progress. i think in all honesty those in the advocacy would need to measure those changes in the short term not just in the whole five years so that they get credit for what's done. >> and it also gives us optimism to keep drawing. at least that's what i look at it. >> and we will take questions

from the audience. just wander up to that microphone. >> question of what's going on. i would offer, there are those have offered the perspective and in some ways i think there's something to it that there's both a management or a line problem at dhs and there's a resource problem created by congress. so when we looked at those that are employed at dhs there's been an interesting challenges. every time there's a prosecutorial discretion or an advancement on administered relief of some form, not always but often times there is i.c.e. agents or did just personal, oftentimes represent by the secretary of kansas i'm not sure how that's hostile but those mostly teater out on standard question to ice employers are trying to stop the policies of their higher ups. that's sort of interesting management challenging culture and i think that speaks to the work of secretary johnson and the deputy secretary.

they have a lot of work to do with those carrying out these policies. supplementation and who cares these at meta. the other thing, we have found more and more money at enforcement and detention. the migration policy institute released a report recently where we are spending 15 times more on removal and detention than we did back in 1986. adjusting for today's dollars that's 219 billion that we have been devoting to these efforts. what is going on? we are paying for what we have asked for, and that as congress and the budget cycles. >> you have a question. >> i'm a student here at wcl, and my question is, i desperately directed -- and also any other panelists would like to reply. my question is in reference to the prosecutorial discretion.

how does this apply to a unaccounted monies were detained at the border? is there a policy, with that is the more of an inference on rolling them and offering -- and offer you spoke of the possibility for vulnerable groups to receive appointed counsel is the art able to afford it. is this something that is being looked at for unaccompanied minor? >> so there's a few things to the question so let me take a couple of them. the issue of unaccompanied minors is a huge and growing issue just in terms of the numbers. that we are seeing coming across the border. my understanding is that those folks, those kids are actually, after their app in a by the border patrol, at least the non-mexican sugar especially are then sent to hhs, which has custody of the individuals. and then they are technically

put in removable proceedings but i do know that children are one of a priority groups for ice to look at in terms of its prosecutorial discretion initiatives. so it's one of the groups identified that ice attorneys and immigration can exercise discretion to not move forward on the case. and, of course, immigration judges encouraged that were appropriate in individual cases where that happens. i also think a lot of the kids end up through some other out of for relief and so they may not actually end up in court for ever so the kids get closed out and then there's another after they can move forward on. spent part of the question was not whether under consideration for the council. >> so the council area, kind of interesting because i think as peter and others alluded to, we have some statutory mandates that make clear that appointed

counsel at government expense is is not there. having said that, the coveted program i mentioned was a first effort to try to identify those small but still significant groups that go through the court system that really it would be hard for them to i could navigate the system on their own, without some sort of council. that was her effort to try to at least test whether this would work, people who are mentally incompetent to see that works. and so far it has worked pretty well. we are looking at other groups. there's nothing yet public and options as to what are the groups are available. i will say the cynical as i mentioned has a significant portion of -- the senate bill, would make very clear for vulnerable populations, the attorney general and the immigration system, immigration judges can appoint counsel for individuals and that's obviously is a significant signal of

congress intent on that. i will also, our attorney general if you look at what he has testified over the last few days on the hill, he has made clear he'd like to see some sort of initiatives or programs to try to make the system a little bit easier for certain affordable populations including children. i can tell you something we're looking at very closely and we'll see what develops over the next few months. >> thank you. >> is there another audience question? yes. >> good evening. i'm a board member of the bar association of dci my question is anybody who would like to take it. it strikes me one of the points made in addition to the moral and family unification argument on comprehensive immigration reform is the cost, some comments about that. and i'd like to hear from any other panelists tackle the role of private prisons in relation to the cost to our system.

>> sounds like you should start. >> so we have a couple things through the appropriation process. we have a congressional detention bed mandate, which fosters the maximization and use of both federal and private beds. so there is an interesting space was our major corporations to run private prisons that are making record profits. if you look at their campaign contribution, oddly enough they donate to both sides of the aisle. in almost every one of the drivers of this immigration debate, except for a few members, have received campaign contributions from the major private prisons to run these immigration beds. so there's an interesting sort of circular almost guarantee. so peterson focus on alternative

detention is essential. some of the terms of the senate bill that juan other two are essential to how we treat special populations in prison. these include transgender populations that are detained in isolation for a long time. the senate that would put an end to that, would great alternatives to detention but it doesn't fully reform this sort of funding and contributions that exist. >> can i just add something? going back to the comment you made about an ankle bracelet, having, i did a lot of work on the post bill immigration rate, and one of the things we saw there is, i think it's incredibly important that alternatives to detention, particularly for women and children, or women with children not include ankle bracelets.

there is no evidence, data or otherwise, that immigrant women in the u.s. who are here undocumented are going to fully with the kids abroad. there's no reason to be using ankle bracelets. we saw in postal that is really horrific when an immigrant woman is walking around with an ankle bracelet, she becomes a target for prostitution. because what happened was you were walking around, you are undocumented. you have children. that's why you're out. you cannot work legally to feed those children. so what happened in postal is then they brought in a bunch of other workers to replace the ones that were at the plant and mostly male and they started hitting on the women walking around with ankle bracelets. for sex. and so when you talk about undocumented mothers in particular, ankle bracelets are not the solution in terms of -- it's about the detention that it

is totally unnecessary women look at the data, especially when you talk about parents who are caring for kids. eyes want to say having lived through and watched how horrific it was for the women in postville, we talk about alternatives to detention, immigration records should have the same discretion of course to all of the country to forget whether somebody is a flight risk and to assess how to release them. and to only as ankle bracelets when there's a risk they're going to flee, that they will wd to come back to court, et cetera. >> and if we can advocate any way to change those profits and expenses the government is incurring and improving our immigration courts, as you heard, we have three your delays at least in many places around the country. we have people that don't have access to an attorney in immigration court, and you're facing permanent separation from the country. and the way to provide better oversight, i used to work in the

border region and we documented cases where people were transferred eight or nine times within five days. sometimes it was done to save cost by the agency because according to detention guidelines, i can't member how many hours they have to be out in order to be fed. so they would transfer them quicker, you can collect money for chesser and you don't have to spend the cost on feeding them. so we documented cases of people who were being, who would spend three days, four days in detention, would have been a five or six new fatalities and never get -- facilities. and never get there. there's a lack of circumstance. one person in the case of u.s. citizen was deported four times in three years, and foia said that he was a u.s. citizen. and he kept being transferred from arizona to new mexico to tijuana, being deported and then he would come back in.

so it's a huge issue. i think there's a bigger need to shed more light on it. there's a website my group in illinois i race we saw the tracks the immigration detainees in illinois and they have a cool graph on their site that shows how these detainees were transferred across the country, many from eleanor to texas and back to illinois. so if you want to learn more about that you can definitely see. i don't think as many websites that do that so if you search for it you will find it quickly. >> i just had a quick question although just want to say -- >> speaker directly into the microphone both for tv and otherwise. >> i have a quick question regarding funding. also want to push it all the comments. i think it's a significant issue. i think somebody needs to call a just look at the record, see who they're making donations to. i completely agree with that. my question is about the executive off aggression --

moving resource is around, about funding issues. we are currently in arlington facing a significant delay in the two and three your range and i wonder how you make determination with respect to placement of judges, the number of judges, just for the facilitation of removal cases. i mean, to me it seems significant that if you're living in the state of maryland you will be in and out of removal proceedings within a year, maybe a little bit more. there's some significant thing happen. but you can guarantee that if you are a respond to is in the district of london or in the commonwealth of virginia, we will be here until 2016 at least, potentially having hearings until 2017. i recognize on some occasions that is sometimes helpful to buy time, i understand that but overall there are other cases where it seems to me that it is in particular this region that requires more resources.

it's a great court, but this is an issue for them. >> i agree. i think that the issue of how long it takes to get certain cases done in immigration court is troubling. and it's something that bothers me everyday and we tried to look at. generally speaking, the highest pretty cases for immigration courts are detained cases. there's obvious reasons for the. someone is detained in the facility, lots of courts are located to try to speed the. we have shifted more resources to the detained side of the house so that now we have a large number of judges, resources focus on detained cases to move as quickly as possible. and getting them done. when you do that though and when you're not getting the huge influx of new resources, that has consequences for the non-detained side of the house which is what you were talking

about, the arlington court is a good example of that. and the justice department really under attorney general holder recognized this early on. we engaged in a real robust hiring process in 2010 to try to bring on a large number of judges and staff but, unfortunately, congress then engaged in sequestration, and there were hiring freezes. i can tell you what a disaster sequestration was for the immigration court system. we lost a significant number of judges. we were looking at this point last year as possibly even ceasing operations and a couple of courts because it got so bad. luckily we are not there. this year we got some funding. we will be hiring about 30 new judges nationwide this year. including in arlington. there are also staff as well. i am hopeful that congress will

approve the president's request for the immigration courts for fiscal year 2015 but if you look at that it is a significant boost of resources for the next fiscal year. i'm hopeful we'll be engaged in the two-year hiring effort both for judges and staff. but in terms of your question about how to allocate judge resources? for example, it's all done based on anticipating caseload. again, detained has been a priority but on the non-detained side of things to try to engage and try to get as much information as we can from ice and did just as to whether the anticipate enforcement activities happening, most often so we can put judges there. it's imperfect, a moving target, but we do try to shift and make use of technology, leverage technology in a way to try to fill the gaps. it's not all about resources. i don't want to say it's all about resources. we are looking at things to make things better. we are trying to compile

programs around the country, for example, pre-during conferences and non-contested dockets that of some -- shown some success. but resources are a big part of that. we are hopeful with the resources with that this year and next open we can at least get back to dig ourselves out from the hole that sequestration put us in. >> did you have a quick question? we're almost to the end. >> eric hirshberg, i direct university wide research center in latin american and latino studies. we are launching a project looking at the health of u.s. citizen children who have parents deported. and that means, that involves more than a quarter of a million children in the last five years. my understanding is the senate bill included a provision for the reunification of families where parented -- pairs have been deported. can any of you comment on that and/or whether it's likely that such a provision might be

included in a bill that would come out of the house? thank you. >> i've got one page to go but we know the senate product won't be conferenced answers to mention of that are even remotely, phraseology are conceptually at a macro level in one case we've gotten from the house. the political odds are probably not -- we do know that the house approach to this in engagement with offices is going to be a fraction of available in the senate approach. the senate approach, rough estimate would not reach all, would rather reached eight of the olympic the house approach may be more like four to five. that remains to be seen. i want to say because of what the congressional solution to what to do for those parents have been removed who are in other countries, parents to children, there is a new movement.