How to Access Legal Aid in the ICE Era

A close-up shot of a lawyer consulting at a table with a client. A golden scale and gavel are placed on the table. — Credit: Getty Images on Unsplash+

The legal system in the United States is nothing if not complex. Laws are written in elaborate legalese that’s difficult for everyday people to understand. Then there’s case law that’s layered on top of the laws themselves, which dictate how laws are interpreted and applied in the real world. Petitions and other legal paperwork have to be written and formatted in very particular ways. These reasons and more are why it’s nearly impossible to navigate the legal system without a lawyer.

But lawyers cost money—and a lot of it.

The fees for retaining a lawyer range from $75 to $1,000 an hour. The total cost of going through a legal process can stretch to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Considering that the median individual income in the United States is $44,225, legal services are prohibitively expensive for most people.

Many people have heard the Miranda rights warning, popularized by TV and movies: You have a right to a lawyer, and if you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to you. But the right to a lawyer only applies to criminal cases. When it comes to civil litigation—issues like immigration, contract disputes, divorce, and the like—no one is entitled to an attorney.

How Nonprofits Can Help

That’s where legal aid comes in.

People who don’t know where to turn will often start with people they trust.

Legal aid is the provision of free or low-cost legal services that address civil issues which, in general, are issues that cannot result in arrest or other criminal punishment. Legal aid services cover a range of areas, from housing and family law to accessing public benefits and immigration.

Because legal aid is aimed at those who cannot otherwise afford legal help, there are generally income requirements to qualify for services. However, there are also specialized organizations that offer legal help to certain populations like people with disabilities or older Americans who meet specific age requirements.

Still, many people don’t know that legal aid exists. And if they do, they often don’t know how to access it.

“The knowledge gap is immense,” explained Ron Flagg, president of Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of legal aid in the country. As he told NPQ, “The knowledge gap has multiple facets to it. First of all, people are confronted with issues and they don’t understand that there’s a legal component.”

Flagg offered the example of a surprise hospital bill. The bill could come from a hospital that has a charitable hospital organization status and is not supposed to send out bills in the first place. Or the bill could contain accounting errors, or the legal collections window for the bill may have expired.

People often view these kinds of difficulties through a strictly financial lens. “They may not have any perception that there’s a legal issue there,” Flagg elaborated. “Then, even for people who understand they have a legal issue and get the fact that they’d be better off if they had some help with it, they don’t know where to get help.”

“Every state should have a legal information and referral website that covers the state,” J. Singleton, program manager at Legal Services State Support in Minnesota, said in an interview with NPQ. “My office runs a website called LawHelp.org. One of our goals is to be a centralized spot where people can go to search for civil legal aid resources, both in terms of self-help information like fact sheets so that you can know your rights, as well as referral information to various legal aid organizations that can provide a lawyer to help people with the issue they’re facing.”

“Most immigrants face deportation proceedings alone and without any legal defense.”

In Flagg’s experience, people who don’t know where to turn will often start with people they trust—a clergy member, a social worker, friends at the barber shop, and even those they interact with in the nonprofit world.

What anyone in these trusted positions can do, including nonprofit workers, is direct people with civil legal issues to websites which connect users to legal aid options based on their location, like Singleton’s LawHelp.org or Flagg’s LSC.gov.

Most legal aid organizations and programs are plugged into the broader legal aid ecosystem. If their service isn’t the right one for the issue, chances are they’ll know one that is and have a referral ready. The same applies to income limits—if a person doesn’t qualify for one program, legal aid workers may be able to identify other, less stringent programs.

Community Connections

In the current era of increased ICE presence and detention, more and more people are facing deportation or removal proceedings. Immigrants can pay for private legal representation, but they do not have the right to a publicly funded attorney. As the advocacy organization Vera reported, “Because very few can afford to hire a lawyer, most immigrants face deportation proceedings alone and without any legal defense.”

The key is to connect with a specific program that serves an individual’s needs, for example, undocumented people. Depending on funding sources, not every program is able to serve people without legal status. But the legal aid community is connected to other organizations that may assist.

“If you find a legal aid program, if they’re authorized to help, they can help. If not, most of them will know who in their community is authorized and funded to help and they can provide that contact information,” Flagg said.

Here’s what to expect from the legal aid process: First, an intake specialist will verify that a potential client meets the eligibility requirements of the organization. If they qualify and the organization has the capacity to take the case, what comes next depends on the specific situation.

“The need for these services far exceeds what’s available.”

“Sometimes that could be something as simple as getting connected to an attorney to have a conversation and get advice on a legal issue,” Singleton explained. “Sometimes an attorney can help you fill out papers. Other times it can be an attorney to help you throughout the life of your case—to go to court with you, to handle all the paperwork and communications with the government [or other party], whatever the case may be.”

The Need for Aid

Unfortunately, the legal aid community struggles to meet the increasing demand.

In Minnesota, Singleton’s organization saw a dramatic surge in website traffic in January and February as ICE raids ramped up throughout the state.

“Anecdotally, from the direct service legal aid organizations we partner with, they just saw a huge increase in the number of requests for help they were receiving. They did a lot of work to try to help as many people as possible and pulled in private attorneys as volunteers to try to help with the influx,” she said.

That’s in addition to the general shortage faced by legal aid organizations overall. While it’s estimated that the United States is home to more than 1,100 staff-based legal aid programs that employ more than 6,700 full-time attorneys, it’s still not enough to meet the need.

“What we see consistently is that the need for these services far exceeds what’s available, even for those who qualify for assistance,” Flagg said. “All of the programs we fund today turn away half of the people eligible for their services…because of a lack of resources.”