Legislation You Can’t Miss: Fair Day in Court for Kids Act

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H. R. 2043
Fair Day in Court For Kids Act of 2017

SPONSOR: Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
LAST ACTION: Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary

• This bill instructs government programs, such as the Department of Justice, to provide legal counsel to illegal immigrants, including unaccompanied child immigrants, who are going through removal proceedings; that is, who are about to be sent back to the country from which they came.
• The Department of Homeland Security will be required to provide, to illegal immigrants going through removal proceedings, access to all relevant documents attached to said proceeding. If the Department of Homeland Security fails to provide the immigrant with said documents, the removal proceeding shall be postponed accordingly. In other words, immigrants who are detained and in the process of being sent back to their countries of origin, get to see copies of the documents which the Government is using in order to deport them.
• This legal counsel must be accessible to immigrants in any American immigration detention centers or border facilities. In other words, every immigrant who has been detained, gets access to a lawyer.
• The Department of Homeland Security will have the option to give legal counsel to an immigrant going through Immigration and Nationality Act proceedings, and will be required to provide this counsel to unaccompanied child immigrants, or to anyone who is deemed “particularly vulnerable.”
• The Department of Homeland Security will create orientation programs for detained illegal immigrants, and shall create a pilot program within which a court will be created to increase the rates at which the government handles immigration cases concerning unaccompanied children. In other words, programs must be created  that speed up the government’s processing of immigration cases involving unaccompanied children.
• All counsel mentioned in this bill will be paid for by the government.  In other words, the US government will foot the bill for the lawyers who will help the detained immigrants, and for the pilot programs to help speed up the movement of unaccompanied children and teenagers, through the US court system.