You Don't Have the Right to an Attorney. Not in Immigration Court.

A few years ago, images began circulating that stopped people in their tracks. Toddlers, some as young as three years old, sitting in immigration courtrooms. Alone. Trying to answer questions from a judge. Trying to understand proceedings conducted in a language they may not have spoken. Trying to represent themselves in a legal system that took decades of education and experience for the adults in the room to understand.

Those images went viral. They were shared millions of times. People were outraged. And the question that came up over and over again was the same one: where are their court-appointed attorneys?

The answer is jarring in its simplicity. There aren't any. Not because of a funding gap or an administrative failure. Because immigrants in removal proceedings have no constitutional right to one.

Two Court Systems, Two Sets of Rules

To understand why, you have to understand how the American legal system treats different kinds of courts differently.

In criminal court, the Sixth Amendment guarantees you the right to counsel. If you cannot afford an attorney, the state must provide one. This right was established by the Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963 and has been a cornerstone of criminal defense ever since. It applies whether you are charged with a misdemeanor or facing life in prison. The government cannot take your liberty without ensuring you have legal representation.

Immigration court is different. It is a civil administrative proceeding, not a criminal court. It operates under the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Department of Justice. Because it is civil rather than criminal in nature, the Sixth Amendment does not apply. The Fifth Amendment's due process protections do apply, but courts have generally held that due process in immigration proceedings does not require appointed counsel, only that the respondent be given a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

This distinction matters enormously in practice. A criminal defendant facing six months in jail gets a court-appointed attorney. An immigrant facing deportation to a country they fled in fear, potentially never seeing their family again, does not.

Why This Is Such a Problem

Before the recent rounds of federal funding cuts, the situation was already dire. Legal aid organizations, nonprofit immigration clinics, and low bono practitioners were stretched beyond capacity. Waitlists were long. Resources were thin. Organizations doing heroic work were turning people away simply because there were not enough hours in the day to serve everyone who needed help.

Those organizations are now under even greater pressure. Funding cuts have forced some to reduce staff, narrow their intake criteria, or close programs entirely. The safety net that existed, imperfect as it was, is fraying.

For many immigrants this means a private attorney is their only realistic option. And if they cannot afford one, they go to court alone.

The consequences of going to court without representation are not abstract. Studies have consistently shown that represented immigrants are dramatically more likely to obtain relief than unrepresented ones. The complexity of immigration law, the procedural requirements, the evidentiary standards, the deadlines, the discretionary factors that go into a judge's analysis, all of it is overwhelming for someone navigating the system without legal training. And unlike a civil lawsuit where losing might mean a financial judgment, losing in immigration court can mean removal from the only country your children have ever known. It can mean return to a place where your life is at risk. It can mean permanent separation from your family.

The stakes in immigration court are often just as high as in criminal court. Sometimes higher. The law simply does not treat them that way.

A Strange Thing to Hope For

I want to be transparent about something. I am an immigration attorney. My practice depends, in part, on clients who need representation and can pay for it.

And yet I find myself genuinely hoping for a policy change that could one day make that part of my practice irrelevant.

I hope that someday immigrants in removal proceedings have the right to appointed counsel the way criminal defendants do. I hope that someday a three-year-old sitting in an immigration courtroom is an impossibility, not because we have stopped enforcing immigration law, but because no child ever has to face that system without someone in their corner.

It is a strange position to be in, rooting for something that could change the economics of what I do. But the measure of a legal system is not how well it serves people who can afford it. It is how well it serves people who cannot.

I hope one day I am competing with court-appointed attorneys in this field. That would mean the system got a little closer to what it should be.

Until then, if you or someone you know is facing immigration proceedings without representation, please reach out. No one should have to navigate this alone.