County to spend almost $800,000 to give undocumented residents legal aid
Roughly 1,400 undocumented residents in San Mateo County aren’t receiving any legal representation as they face possible deportation out of the United States.
With that data in mind, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to create a new immigrant defense fund with money from the county’s 201819 budget.
The board stocked the fund with $764,000 in the first year to hire attorneys to represent some of the 1,372 residents that Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an organization based at Syracuse University, concluded receive no legal help. The money also will pay support staff for training and outreach to the immigrant community.
According to the county, 4,009 residents currently are going through deportation proceedings.
“San Mateo County is a county of immigrants — about a third of our residents were born abroad,” board President Dave Pine said Wednesday. “These (undocumented) people are under great hardship under Trump’s policies. Many of these residents have legal cases to make to defend their residency in the United States. … Some of the obvious areas are unaccompanied minors, people trying to seek asylum, fleeing domestic abuse, trying to keep families together.
The main focus, according to Pine and Supervisor Warren Slocum — who both sit on a subcommittee analyzing how to implement the fund — is to provide assistance for 259 unaccompanied undocumented minors living in the county. According to Catholic Charities, the county has the highest amount of such minors in the Bay Area. Pine and Slocum anticipate bringing their report back to the full board July 10 for possible approval.
Pine said he hopes some of the money could go toward paying bonds for family members undergoing deportation proceedings so they can be with their families. He also said the door has been left open to add more money to the fund in its first year if it’s needed.
“We think this is a good start, but the board did indicate yesterday that we would be willing to revisit the funds we agreed on,” he said. “This will get us up and running but it’s a very hard thing to assess … (what) type of cases we’ll want to work on.”