Where is a poor immigrant to find a lawyer?
In Manhattan, which has perhaps the largest corps of lawyers in the world, hundreds of poor immigrants sitting in an immigration detention center are unable to turn to the help of lawyers in an attempt to avoid deportation. Robert Katzman, a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, believes that this situation should remind us of the need to expand the scale of volunteer work in immigration courts, where defendants do not have the right to an attorney and where they are frequently provided with unqualified lawyers who are overloaded with cases. But Judge Katzman, whose grandfather was an immigrant from Russia and whose father fled persecution by the Nazis, discovered that in the city historically considered a gateway for immigrants, only a few large law firms heed this urgent demand. This is why Judge Katzman decided to take unusual measures: using his high position, he began his unique “crusade” to improve legal representation for immigrants. What started two years a
