Sessions: Won’t pause aid program
WASHINGTON >> After objections from immigration lawyers and lawmakers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday that he would not suspend a legal-aid program for detained immigrants while it undergoes a review.
The government-funded Legal Orientation Program, launched in 2003 under President George W. Bush, was created to ensure that immigrants know their rights and legal options in court. It serves more than 50,000 detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings each year.
Sessions, an immigration hawk, said the U.S. immigration courts had planned to suspend the program starting as early as next week. At a budget hearing before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, he signaled he’d had questions about pausing the program from lawmakers in both parties, including
subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, and ranking member Senator Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.
“I have previously expressed some concerns about the program,” Sessions said. “I recognize that this committee has spoken on this matter, and, out of deference to the committee, I have ordered that there be no pause while the review is being conducted.”
Sessions said he also would not suspend a “help desk” run by the Vera Institute for Justice, the nonprofit which also holds the federal contract to run the Legal Orientation Program.
Earlier this month, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the Justice Department’s immigration courts, said the government intended to evaluate both programs’ cost effectiveness and determine whether they duplicated other efforts to inform immigrants of their rights under U.S. law. The help deskoffers tips to nondetained immigrants facing deportation proceedings in the Chicago, Miami, New York, Los Angeles and San Antonio courts. Approximately eight in 10 detainees in immigration court face a government prosecutor without a lawyer, according to Vera.
The immigration judges’ labor union, immigration lawyers and leading Democratic lawmakers had criticized plans to temporarily halt the program.