Alejandra Cano didn’t think she was at any risk.
She had been sober for five years after decades battling drug addiction. He had had several police problems during his use, mainly from shoplifting. But that was his previous life.
46-year-old Cano was a single mother who lived and worked with her two teenage sons in a comfortable apartment on the West Side of Chicago. He had not seen his father or his homeland for almost 20 years and decided to travel to Chile in August 2019.
“I had my green card,” he noted, the permanent residency green card. “I had no reason to worry.”
He was wrong. On her return from Chile, customs and border protection agents from O’Hare International Airport detained her. They had seen his background on the computer and after hours of waiting they pulled out his green card. The government wanted to revoke her residence permit and deport her.
Cano is one of thousands of people – including undocumented immigrants, visa holders and residents – who go through deportation proceedings in Chicago every year, according to federal immigration court data collected by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The arrests attract the attention of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as do certain convictions.
Non-citizens can eventually be expelled in so-called “collateral effects,” something like the loss of the right to vote and other civil penalties imposed when someone is convicted of misconduct.
The Cook County Public Defender’s Office estimates that staff represent hundreds of non-citizens charged with a crime, all of whom could have “collateral effects.”
A new unit of the public defender’s office dealing with immigrants is trying to avoid these deportations for a previous offense. Working with public defenders, prosecutors and civil society organizations, she tries to make sure that immigrants are aware of the consequences they could have if they come to a settlement with prosecutors.
That was always a requirement in Illinois, but Cano says his public defender never informed him – something that happens all too often, according to several Cook County immigration attorneys who spoke to Injustice Watch and Borderless Magazine.
Three of the five crimes Cano pleaded guilty to between 2005 and 2013 were shoplifting. This can be punished with expulsion.
If he’d known, Cano said he’d thought twice before getting on the plane. “At least I would have hired an immigration attorney to help me see what the situation was like.”
Crimes that are punishable
Immigration issues play a prominent role in Cook County courthouses, where one in five residents was born abroad. Many of those residents live in the Chicago metropolitan area, which is home to about 480,000 resident aliens and about 460,000 undocumented migrants, according to a recent study published by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
It is unclear how many foreign nationals of non-U.S. Citizens face criminal charges in Cook County, as the courts do not take note of the defendants’ immigration status. An internal investigation conducted last year by Cook’s public defenders found that Cook defended about 700 foreigners from more than 80 countries last year.
“The immigration status of all these people is facing the consequences of these crimes,” said Sharone Mitchell Jr.
When it comes to the types of crimes that can lead to deportation, immigration laws are at the same time precise and vague. Deportable crimes generally fall into two categories: serious crimes – such as drug trafficking, making false tax returns or failing to show up for court – and crimes involving some immorality.
This last category is blurry. The Justice Department itself said that “it is difficult to describe these crimes precisely”. The category includes murder and other acts of violence, as well as non-violent crimes such as embezzlement, fraud, forgery and theft. In the absence of a clear definition, the courts can use their discretion, depending on the case.
To complicate matters, alternative sentences – such as parole, restitution, community service, and rehabilitation treatment – that are often used to settle with prosecutors can also lead to deportation.
Therefore it is not easy to determine in advance what the “side effects” in these immigration cases might be.
While lawyers are required by law to notify a client if an out-of-court settlement carries the risk of deportation, numerous Chicago immigration attorneys told Injustice Watch and Borderless Magazine that there are loopholes in the system in practice that allow immigrants access to the protection of collateral effects.
Kate Ramos, an attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, a Chicago nonprofit, represents Cano in the fight to avoid deportation. The Chilean is not the only client at risk of deportation after reaching an agreement with the prosecution, Ramos said: “Many of our clients tell us they were unaware of the consequences.”
The presence of an immigration unit in the public defender’s office could be important, according to Ramos. “Public defenders are not immigration lawyers,” he said. “They seek the best for their clients from a criminal perspective, so it is important to have an office that addresses both“ criminal consequences and immigration ”.
Before the Immigration Unit became operational, public defenders consulted with immigration attorneys on a case-by-case basis.
But Angela Kilpatrick, director of public defense at the Bridgeview Courthouse in Cook County, said it is sometimes not easy to strike a balance between a client’s immediate needs – such as admission of guilt to regain freedom and the potential impact on your immigration status. in the future.
According to Kilpatrick, having an immigration attorney with the same ombudsman helps a lot.
Leading the unit is attorney Hena Mansori, with extensive experience in the field of immigration and who worked for more than a decade at the National Center for Immigrant Justice. Since January, he has trained dozens of public defenders through Zoom and created a new system to identify cases where public defenders are defending foreigners. The system is protected by attorney-client privileges so immigrants don’t have to worry about ICE chasing them.
The immigration unit is currently single, but plans to hire two immigration attorneys and one other person to assist Mansori this year, Mansori said.
One lawyer for each immigrant
While the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to a lawyer, immigration courts do not recognize that right. Last year, 66% of immigrants who underwent deportation proceedings had none, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. At immigration courts in Chicago, that figure is close to 70%.
When immigrants at risk of deportation have a lawyer, they are ten times more likely to win their case, according to an analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice.