Providing legal representation to all children who arrived alone seeking humanitarian protection at U.S. borders between 2008 and 2016 could have made the immigration system more effective, according to a report by the Institute for Defense Analyses. Children seeking asylum or other protections would have succeeded 22 percent more often. The report found that more children would have attended all their immigration court appearances and that the overall number of court hearings would have decreased. In sum, MacArthur-grantee Institute for Defense Analyses found that several key immigration court outcomes related to court efficiency and qualify of justice would have improved if all children had been provided access to legal representation.
