Catalino Alvarado had lived in Denver for more than 20 years when he was detained by immigration enforcement officers and locked up in the Aurora detention facility.
He spent 41 days there, leaving his wife, a Denver native, and their two young children without any income. He couldn’t afford an attorney. Assuming he would be deported, Alvarado started to plan to move the entire family back to his native Guatemala.
“I was hopeless,” said Alvarado. “It’s the case of so many people in there. I didn’t know how to defend myself or who to go to.”
After reading a poster at the detention center, he was able to get free legal help from Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network because of funding through the Denver Immigrant Legal Services Fund. The attorney helped free him on bond and is working to craft a defense against deportation. It changed everything for him, he said.
Alvarado was lucky. Hundreds of other Denver residents face an immigration judge without a lawyer because there is no public defender system in immigration court. Even more people could soon be added to that tally due to a shortfall in money for the Immigrant Legal Services Fund.
The fund funnels a combination of city dollars and private donations to four nonprofits that help indigent Denver residents fight deportation and apply for legal residence by providing legal assistance.
A $50,000 decline in money from the city paired with a drop in private donations has caused the fund’s 2020 budget to fall to $250,000 from the approximately $385,000 it received in fiscal years 2018 and 2019.
“I think COVID unfortunately really shifted a lot of focus for folks, and rightfully so, but now we’re in a hopeful space where we’re trying to engage private support,” Atim Otii, director of the city’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, said Wednesday during a presentation to a City Council committee.
During the 2019 fiscal year, 1,620 Denver residents faced deportation proceedings without an attorney — about two-thirds of the 2,478 city residents who faced removal, Otii said.
That includes more than 800 people who were detained at the federal Aurora Contract Detention Facility without legal representation to help argue for their release while proceedings continue. For those detainees, many of whom are the main breadwinner of their household, that means prolonged and indefinite confinement, said Sarah Plastino, senior staff attorney at Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
“Immigration detention is civil detention, not criminal,” she said. “But the detention centers are built like jails.”
When facing deportation, the burden of proof is on the immigrant, who must mount their own legal defense against a savvy government lawyer, Plastino said. Many of the legal cases take years and are complex.
If an extra $150,000 is not found for the fund, three of the four nonprofits that use the money will have to significantly cut back the number of Denver residents they can help, Otii said. The money has helped provide legal representation for 270 people since its creation in 2018.
Even at last year’s funding level, the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network estimated, at least 80 people detained in the Aurora detention center were eligible for the program but did not receive services because there wasn’t enough money. Last year, the network’s attorneys represented 42 Denver residents through the program, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade.
Several council members voiced support for the program and finding additional funding.
“Given that it was hard fought, I would hate to see it die on the vine,” Councilwoman Jamie Torres said.
The work is important, Councilman Paul Kashmann said, and it is only scratching the surface. It would take significantly more money — at least a million dollars — to pay for representation for every person eligible, Otii said.
