Rep. Garcia introduces bill to fund immigration court lawyers

A House California Democrat is proposing a bill to fund legal defense services for people in immigration court, where only about a third of processed immigrants have legal representation.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) is introducing the Shield Act to provide $100 million in grants aimed at expanding the legal workforce defending immigration cases.

Garcia said the bill is modeled after a fund he established as mayor of Long Beach, Calif., to find legal support and representation for undocumented people facing deportation.

“That was something that was [my] initiative when I was mayor, and coming to Congress, this need is still very much real across the country, especially at moments that we’re in now where there’s so many attacks on immigrants, and so this is a great opportunity to expand something that has been very successful in my home city,” Garcia told The Hill.

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a government data tracker housed at Syracuse University, the immigration court backlog is far outgrowing representation.

At the end of 2019, 660,366 immigrants had representation in immigration court, and 363,401 didn’t, according to TRAC.

By the end of 2023, 987,770 immigrants found representation, but backlogs grew so much that 2,299,288 people did not have representation.

A rule implemented in November 2022 making it somewhat simpler for attorneys to provide limited advice in immigration cases has had some success, resulting in legal aid reaching immigrants 23,516 times as of the end of May.

And legal representation is a game changer in immigration court.

In June, 25,064 cases without representation ended in an order of removal, while just 3,506 cases with representation led to an order of removal. Conversely, 3,925 cases with representation led judges to grant relief, while only 229 cases without representation came to that end.

Still, bills like Garcia’s are unlikely to see the light of day in a Republican-controlled House that’s looking in the other direction on immigration.

On Wednesday, the House passed the Save Act, which aims to increase voter registration requirements to prevent noncitizen voting, already a rare occurrence.

“We couldn’t be farther apart. I mean, first of all, that bill is worthless, because we know that people that are undocumented can’t vote in this country, and just attacking immigrants and people that are in the citizenship process or undocumented is just inhumane, and it’s sad,” said Garcia.

The Save Act will likely not see the light of day in the Senate, and the White House announced President Biden would veto it if it came to his desk.

Garcia’s Shield Act is extremely unlikely to get consideration this Congress, but the first-term representative, himself an immigrant who came from Peru at age 5, said introducing it is a step forward.

“Any bill that that we introduce, our intention is to get it passed. And even if this current Speaker and current majority aren’t going to be supportive, we have introduced it,” Garcia said of the measure, which had input from organizations including the Vera Institute of Justice and the National Partnership for New Americans.

“We’ve worked with the groups around the language, we’re going to get sponsors and co-sponsors and we’re going to push really hard. And so when we win the majority back, and I hope that’s obviously soon, we will be in a strong position to get this bill heard and debated and across the finish line. I think that is our intention for this bill.”