NYC Know Your Rights Project
Overview
Welcome to the City Bar Justice Center's NYC Know Your Rights Project, a joint effort of several organizations working to provide access to justice to detainees at the Varick Federal Detention Center.
Read the New York Times front-page article on our report on right to counsel at the Varick Federal Detention Facility.
Read the report: "NYC Know Your Rights Project: An Innovative Pro Bono Response to the Lack of Counsel for Indigent Immigrant Detainees"
Read the press release on the report.
Read a complementary report from the New York City Bar's Immigration & Nationality Law Committee, entitled "Report on the Right to Counsel for Detained Individuals in Removal Proceedings"
The NYC Know Your Rights Project is a collaborative effort between the City Bar Justice Center (CBJC), The Legal Aid Society, the New York City chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), participating pro bono law firms, and several law school clinics, providing immigration advice and legal assistance to detainees at the Varick Federal Detention Center.
The Project conducts a weekly Thursday morning legal clinic onsite at the facility. The Fragomen Fellow, a rotating one-year fellow placed at the CBJC from the immigration law firm of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP, oversees the project, from training and recruiting new volunteers to overseeing the follow-up on all open cases. Each week participating firms and organizations send an aggregate team of ten attorneys to the facility where they meet with detainees and conduct screening interviews. Pairs of attorneys, supervised by volunteer immigration expert AILA mentors, determine whether immigration relief is available to the detainees they interview and make appropriate referrals to pro bono (or “low bono”) counsel. The model is a brief services model so that volunteers are not expected to take cases on for full representation in the removal proceedings. The pro bono attorney interviews the detainee following a detailed interview form created for the clinic, verifies with an AILA mentor the accuracy of advice, and then counsels the detainee on their options and answers any questions. The Legal Aid Society, which also rotates through the AILA mentor pool, has managed the relationship with the facility, including coordinating meetings with Varick administrators, exchanging information, and reporting serious medical issues, and running criminal background checks to help determine the relief eligibility of the detainees seen at each clinic.
