PUBLIC DEFENDERS COALITION FOR IMMIGRANT JUSTICE
MISSION STATEMENT
As public defenders who represent noncitizens in criminal and immigration proceedings, we witness everyday the devastating impact of criminal and immigration laws that disproportionately punish noncitizens and separate immigrant families by incarceration and deportation. This Coalition seeks to harness both the collective power and perspective of public defenders and to center our clients and their families to illustrate the injustices noncitizens face in both the criminal and immigration legal systems.
As the Public Defenders’ Coalition for Immigrant Justice, we use our collective voice to advocate for policies that disentangle the criminal and immigration legal systems and promote family unity, community integrity, and public safety as opposed to failed “tough on crime” policies that result in trauma, poverty and incarceration. Through federal, state, and local legislation, policy, and administrative advocacy, we prioritize family reunification, decarceration, and due process protections for immigrant communities as outlined in the Ten Point Plan.
The need for this Coalition
As public defenders for noncitizens facing criminalization and deportation, we see how legislative and policy reforms immediately impact thousands of people we represent in criminal and immigration proceedings every year. We are familiar with how dramatic changes to immigration policy and law directly play out in criminal and immigration courts across the country as well as before federal agencies such as ICE, the BIA, and USCIS.
This Coalition is critical to ensure that our clients -- those trapped within both the criminal and immigration legal systems -- are not left behind nor sacrificed in the effort to advance immigration reform. As public defenders we see how even the most basic constitutional rights are denied, such as the Sixth Amendment right to advice and defense against deportation due to criminal legal system contact, as enumerated in Padilla v. Kentucky. Envisioning any new reforms to protect immigrant communities requires engaging with advocates who practice and navigate “crimmigration” law and policy every day for members of our most vulnerable communities. Our voices are critical to ensure that any substantive immigration reform is sensical, meaningful, and does not perpetuate the harms of the criminal legal system.
Who we are and who we serve
We define “public defenders” as public defender offices or indigent defender organizations, which include any court or government-appointed entity representing indigent people in the criminal legal system, including people facing criminal charges, convictions, sentencing, and incarceration; or whose legal representation arises from criminal legal system contact. As public defenders, we work with immigrant communities whose intersecting identities subject them to criminalization, incarceration, and deportation. We know that the people we serve are historically vilified in discussions of immigration law and policy. The needs and impact of policies on our clients and their families are disregarded. People with criminal arrest histories are scapegoated and demonized. We witness how this negligent and invidious dehumanization devastates the safety and prosperity of immigrant communities, through immigration and criminal legal systems that interact to destroy families by incarceration and banishment.