[JURIST] US Attorney General Eric Holder [official website] announced in a speech at the Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention of the Hispanic National Bar Association [official website] that migrant children who come across the border unaccompanied should have legal representation [text]. In his speech Holder stated, “[t]hough these children may not have a constitutional right to a lawyer, we have policy reasons and a moral obligation to insure the presence of counsel.” Holder also announced that justice AmeriCorps [advocacy website] will begin the first phase in providing legal aid to migrant children. Holder also emphasized that the government must strive to find a better way to attack the issues of immigration and provide a better path to US citizenship. While Holder remains on the other side in the courtroom he still feels that the US has policy and moral obligations to provide counsel to migrant children.

The US government has been struggling to accommodate massive influxes of undocumented children coming from Central American countries. At the end of June the Obama administration announced that it would boost the ranks [JURIST report] of immigration judges, lawyers and asylum officers with the projected result of decreasing the flow of undocumented children into the country. According to Department of Homeland Security Deputy Director Alejandro Mayorkas [official profile], 52,000 unaccompanied children arrived on the US border with Mexico between October 2013 and June 2014. In April the Department of Justice released statistics [JURIST report] that show a steady decline in new deportation cases brought by the Obama administration in US immigration courts over the last five years and that more judges have begun ruling against deportations.