As immigration detentions continue to climb in Oklahoma and across the country, federal immigration court data shows people detained in Oklahoma are among the least likely to find legal representation for their pending cases. Local immigration attorneys — and their clients — are feeling the strain.
According to federal data through September of last year, about 80% of people with pending immigration court cases in Oklahoma are not being represented by an attorney.
Of the nearly 24,600 cases pending in Oklahoma, only about 4,700 of them have lawyers working on behalf of migrants.
Detained migrants in Oklahoma are among the least likely to obtain any legal defense, according to data analyzed by the TRAC immigration project based at Syracuse University. Oklahoma ranks second, just after Idaho, in unrepresented immigration cases.
Lorena Rivas is an immigration attorney with offices in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, the two places with the most pending cases. She says the need for a lawyer these days is far outpacing the capacity of existing attorneys to help.
“There is a lower number of immigration attorneys in Oklahoma,” Rivas said.
“Statewide, we have a lot of rural areas of the state which themselves are underrepresented by general attorneys, as is.”
As of last fall, 71 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties had pending immigration cases, most of them being recent detention proceedings. The exceptions are Roger Mills, Dewey, Cotton, Coal, Atoka, and Latimer counties.
And while most pending cases are in either the Tulsa or the Oklahoma metro areas, hundreds of cases are spread out across the state, with mixed chances for representation.
Texas County, for example, had 559 cases as of September— 221 of which had some form of legal help for the defendant. That’s a 37% representation rate — nearly twice as high as the state’s average. The Panhandle county’s population of 20,880 is 51% Hispanic, according to the last census data.
Dozens of other rural counties also have around a hundred pending cases each. Those include Muskogee, Garvin, Bryan, Custer and McCurtain Counties. The rates of representation in those areas range from 4.1% to 30.1%.
Barriers leading to low representation
Rivas said the data put a number to the shock her team has experienced since they started taking so many detention cases last year.
“We’ve had our hands full having to adjust to the onslaught of people being detained, the onslaught of changes in policies and procedures and how cases are moving faster,” Rivas said. “It’s not surprising because, you know, we are such a small number of attorneys in the state of Oklahoma.”
Besides, she said, many immigrants in Oklahoma have learned to feel safe and build communities.
“A lot of people have been living comfortably here in the United States or here in Oklahoma without status for lots and lots of years because the communities embraced them, and they became members of the community, especially in these small towns,” she said. “And so they didn’t fear any backlash.”
For many living in Oklahoma without federal immigration permissions, it’s too late by the time they’ve called a lawyer. Often, people are transferred to federal custody – usually out of state – within days of being arrested by local authorities cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
And for the ones who do choose to prepare for deportation, attorney fees are often too expensive.
Immigration detention proceedings can be complex and intense. Rivas said the difficulties dissuade many immigration attorneys from the work. Many instead focus on family immigration law and other aspects.
And if someone does choose to take on detention cases, she said, they have no choice but to charge their worth. Prices for legal services for a single case can range anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000, Rivas said.
She said sometime in 2025, she realized the paradigm of what it means to practice immigration law had shifted away from what she’s used to.
“We were no longer operating under the old thinking that immigration attorneys were, you know, helping people win cases, get their approvals, get their green cards, and legal permanent residents get their papers,” she said. “ And I had to change our mentality of like, we’re more like criminal defense attorneys.”
In a world of constant loss, Rivas said that means the goal is to ‘just try and find the wins.”
This article was originally published by KOSU. You can see the original story here.