By Michelle Blouin, Communications Associate, Access to Justice Lab, Harvard Law School
Proof Over Precedent loves a study that generates evidence on the effect of access to counsel in civil cases (see Who Deserves a Lawyer? The Hidden Gender Bias in the Right to Counsel; Denied: Global Right to Counsel Study; and Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors–Poster Children for the Access to Justice Gap). When it comes to immigration detention, it’s a familiar story—a lack of counsel for individuals in removal proceedings could, according to right-to-counsel advocates, lead to grave consequences. One study in Chicago set out to determine the degree to which early legal representation could improve case outcomes and due process in immigration proceedings.
The study, conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) with the Midwest Immigrant Defenders Alliance (MIDA) providing legal counsel, took place in the Chicago Immigration Court from March 2022 to May 2025. A report on the findings came out in April this year. In the accompanying podcast episode, an interview with Neil Agrawal, Principal Data Scientist at Vera, and Jacquelyn Pavilon, Associate Director of Research at Vera, notes the organization’s mission to “advance due process and ensure everyone at risk of deportation has an attorney by their side as they navigate their immigration proceedings.”
“Across the country there’s more than 70 jurisdictions that publicly fund deportation defense, especially as many public funds for it are being cut or challenged,” Pavilon said. “And so with that challenge and that termination of federal funds and the increased investment elsewhere comes kind of increased accountability that is necessary to show the effectiveness, and I think that’s kind of what this program does.”
Study Setting
The study focused on a particular subset of immigration proceedings: those related to Section 240 of the Immigration and Nationality Act—“Removal Proceedings.” The Vera report from the study indicated 3.5 million immigrant removal pending cases in U.S. immigration courts in 2025. Of those, 2.1 million cases did not have legal representation. Vera hoped to provide evidence in support of deportation defense programs for the sake of due process.
All of the study participants facing these 240 proceedings were held in detention. They had just two eligibility requirements:
- No legal counsel at the time of their first hearing
- Income of 200% of the poverty line or below
MIDA pulled legal representation from four founding legal service providers: the National Immigrant Justice Center, the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender, The Immigration Project, and The Resurrection Project. It has since increased to seven legal service providers for the Chicago Immigration Court jurisdiction.
At the heart of the Vera-MIDA partnership was the search for evidence on “the impact of legal counsel for people in detained proceedings who do not already have representation,” as noted in the report. To generate this evidence, they designed a model in which MIDA offered its legal services to eligible detainees on certain days of the week determined by attorney availability on any given day. The study wasn’t a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Instead, the lawyers chose which days of which weeks they would appear to offer services based on their capacity. The results thus depended on the assumption that the days the attorneys chose to appear were in relevant ways similar to the days that the attorneys did not choose to appear, together with (for the results that used this step) econometric “instrumental variables” assumptions.
Eligible individuals were listed on a Chicago detained docket, meaning they’re detained in an immigration detention center and were scheduled to be heard before the Chicago Immigration Court in detained proceedings. On those certain days of the week, attorneys who were available to offer their services would sit in the initial hearings via remote observation as a “friend of the court”. Before proceedings began, the judge would read from a script to inform the person that an attorney is present, so they could adjourn their case and reschedule it to give time for the initial eligibility screening, if interested. Most individuals qualified for legal representation.
MIDA’s funding was limited to certain study parameters including jurisdiction requirements and a requirement that lawyers represent detained clients only. Occasionally, MIDA would lose a client due to the case being transferred to another jurisdiction or a client being released on bond.
Around 45 percent of eligible detainees turned down the legal representation offering. The researchers found that “detention fatigue” often contributed to an individual’s reason for refusal—the study’s intake model, which required a pause in the hearing, an eligibility screening, and then legal consultation would prolong the process for detainees already being held in sometimes difficult conditions. Researchers found that an earlier intake model in which people were offered legal services before the first hearing would likely result in higher acceptance rates. But it would also, however, require coordination with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
In this study, then, MIDA ultimately represented about 20 percent of the people appearing on a given day’s detained docket.
The researchers used two comparisons:
- Individuals on MIDA days vs. non-MIDA days
- Individuals who received MIDA representation vs. non-MIDA-represented individuals
The first comparison concerned how the program could be scaled to other communities, while the second comparison looked at the effect of lawyer representation on clients.
Outcomes
So what did they discover? Vera grouped outcomes into four categories: relief, generic relief, bond outcomes, and motion/application filings. In all categories, legal representation improved results for detained individuals in immigration proceedings.
According to the authors, relief measured the best outcome. “Relief” here meant that an individual being allowed to remain in the U.S. permanently with full protection from removal as compared to any other outcome. Researchers found that a MIDA attorney made clients 4.7 times more likely to be granted relief and receive full protection from removal.
Generic relief compared a grant of permission to stay in the U.S., at least temporarily, as opposed to any outcome that would require an individual to leave the U.S. They found that access to the MIDA program resulted in 22 percent more people getting an outcome that allowed them to remain in the U.S. This result informed the scalability of the program, indicating that 22 percent more people in the U.S. would be permitted to stay in the country if they had access to legal representation.
On measurements of bond outcome, researchers examined whether individuals were more likely to have a bond hearing, be released on a bond set by an immigration judge, or be released on ICE’s discretion. MIDA-represented individuals were found to be 46 percent more likely to be released on bond set by an immigration judge than those not represented by MIDA.
The fourth outcome assessed the number of motions or applications the lawyers filed to ensure cases proceeded as they should, an indication of due process. The report noted, “For every 100 MIDA clients and 100 similarly situated nonclients, MIDA clients had 48 more total motions filed, including 20 more substantive motions, than nonclients.” Further analysis showed that MIDA clients did not file more relief-specific motions than nonclients, pointing to more effective application identification and litigation.
“It’s not that […] a right for them to stay is being created . . . .[I]t’s that the outcome that they are afforded based on the law is being found through the help of this representative,” Agrawal said.
If you’re interested in more on this topic, listen to our podcast episode.