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A 2011 study in New York quantified the importance of representation in immigration cases. Asylum-seekers who had a lawyer and were never detained were successful 73% of the time, while those without a lawyer succeeded just 13% of the time. For those who were detained, only 3% succeeded if they lacked a lawyer; 18% succeeded if they did have one.
But the percentage of immigrants with lawyers declined significantly from 2019 to the end of 2023, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which called a shortage of immigration attorneys a “key constraint” on this fall.
Noncitizens had found attorneys in 65% of all pending cases in the immigration court’s backlog at the end of fiscal year 2019, according to the data research organization. By December 2023, that had dropped to 30%.
At 38%, Maryland had the eight-highest representation rate.
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