AG Asks Whether Potential Deportees Have Right to Effective Lawyers

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has asked lawyers in three immigration cases to submit briefs on whether aliens have a right to effective assistance of counsel and if so, how they can enforce the right.

The move comes as the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed immigrant Maria Galvez to reopen her case because the lawyer who took $5,000 in fees from her didn’t turn in the required documents, resulting in a dismissal, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Galvez’s new lawyer, Stacy Tolchin, says Galvez is not the only immigrant whose case was botched by an incompetent lawyer. "This is a huge problem, attorneys not following through," Tolchin told the newspaper. "They take the money, they file one document, they do nothing and the people are deported."

Mukasey’s request for briefs was made in three different cases decided by the Bureau of Immigration Appeals. The 9th Circuit is one of several federal appeals courts that have recognized a constitutional or statutory right to effective assistance for aliens, Legal Times reports. Others include the 1st and 2nd U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal.

The ABA has submitted a letter to the attorney general that says it considers the right to effective assistance to be of utmost importance, the Los Angeles Times story says.

Mukasey is weighing the effective assistance question even as he is proposing new rules that would give the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review more authority to punish incompetent lawyers, the Legal Times story says. Usually state ethics bodies take the lead in disciplining immigration lawyers.