“Providing legal support will likely result in an additional 53,000 New Yorkers being able to remain in their communities. And yet, the government is not required to give them a lawyer, even though the rulings of these cases can result in traumatizing, life-altering consequences.”

Can you imagine a toddler sitting in court, their head barely popping up above the defendant’s table, looking around blankly? And the judge sitting there high above them, asking if they know what a lawyer is, waiting to send them to a country they have no memory of? That’s actually the current reality of unaccompanied immigrant children forced to face deportation proceedings without a lawyer.

The right to an attorney is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment of our Bill of Rights. It is a fundamental American right to ensure justice and due process in our court systems, except we deny that right to some of the most vulnerable in our country.

More than two-thirds of all immigration cases nationally are with children and unaccompanied minors who are unrepresented in court. And now, with President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportation, it is even more urgent that immigrants facing deportation, especially children, have the right to a lawyer. New York must pass the Access to Representation Act, not just to ensure a fair and just trial, but also to reduce the immense backlog of immigration cases and the expenses of funding deportation. 

It is proven that having a lawyer can dramatically change a child’s fate in court, with 70 percent of children able to remain in the country while only 9 percent of children without a lawyer have been able to stay. In fact, immigrants with legal representation are 10.5 times more likely to succeed in their cases than their unrepresented counterparts in removal proceedings.

Providing legal support will likely result in an additional 53,000 New Yorkers being able to remain in their communities. And yet, the government is not required to give them a lawyer, even though the rulings of these cases can result in traumatizing, life-altering consequences.

Large-scale deportation and detention will only contribute to our judicial systems being overwhelmed by the number of appeals in court dockets. Currently, the state of New York has a backlog of 350,000 people, of whom only 45 percent were represented by an attorney. Due to the backlog, the average wait time for a person’s first immigration hearing is four years. In an attempt to speed up the process, our court systems try to cut corners and get through as many cases as possible in a day, leading to a lack of attention and detail regarding each person’s individual circumstances. 

Instead of spending billions of dollars on mass deportation and ICE, let’s spend that money on providing people with the lawyers they desperately need and reforming our immigration court system to be more efficient.

A policy of large-scale deportation could result in a loss to New York State of $40 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over 10 years, but just 53,000 immigrants staying in New York would result in the federal, state and local government seeing a net present value benefit of $8.4 billion. Let’s realign our economic priorities to be more efficient and invest in lawyers for migrants as a way to invest in our city’s future. 

Recently, Mayor Eric Adams said that migrants are not owed due process because they are the ones who came into our country unlawfully, as if the Constitution doesn’t apply to migrant New Yorkers. But does entering the country without documents somehow justify a child being deported back to the violence that they had escaped, without a chance of a fight?

Turns out, everyone on U.S. soil is in fact subject to the laws in the Constitution, proving Mayor Adams’ assertion legally incorrect. Every individual in criminal court has the right to an attorney paid by the government. We provide everyone with a lawyer, regardless of any perceived bias around the crime they may have committed, to ensure that no person suffers undue consequences. Immigrants facing detention and deportation deserve the same right.

New York must protect our communities against plans for mass deportation by passing the Access to Representation Act. This act will ensure that everyone gets a fair chance in court, and that no one is stripped away from their community just because they didn’t have a lawyer.

Reach out to your elected representatives today to remind them of the urgency of this bill. Let’s protect our immigrant neighbors, and that little toddler standing alone in a courtroom, facing deportation without a lawyer.

Priya Vaikuntapathi is an immigrant justice advocate and a current graduate student at NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.