We represent the interests of the latino professionals in this country. At the regional level we collaborate very closely with the associate Bar Association in d. C. , maryland, and virginia, and as ive mentioned, i am still searching for a West Virginia contact. We do a tremendous amount of programming at the local level. One of which is we will have a judge in in honor of a baltimore, recently appointed to be a Circuit Court judge. That makes five judges within the state of maryland. Obviously a tremendous amount of work left to do. You are invited to attend. That reception will be in baltimore. Flyers are in the front desk area were the materials are. In addition, we have partnered with the bars of maryland, d c, and virginia to create an attorney director. It will be a publication that will encompass all latino attorneys or attorneys that speak spanish as well to serve, to be listed on the publication as a resource for the community not only the community as a whole, but the Legal Community as well. All right. Thank you very much. I will be around. Hopefully you will be able to participate in the national convention, which will be occurring september of this year. That will be in d. C. The convention will take place september 12 and 13th. I encourage all of you to attend and to participate. And obviously, thank you for being here as well. Good afternoon. My name is david krum. Good to see you all here. A lot of what the maryland hispanic heart does is partner with latino groups in maryland to help out the Latino Community. We partner often with groups in maryland. There was recently a maryland state Bar Association group that with local immigrant populations to further educate visas sohe u and v they could become a committed here in the United States. Also maryland passed in january of this year a law allowing those who are undocumented to obtain driver licenses, which are very important, certainly in maryland. Licensor lawsthe changed, i myself saw so many people targeted for driving without a license, while oftentimes what they would do, ipecially in frederick, and spoke to panel us this same 7g contact where local authorities would have the ability to get paid by the federal government to house tgnes for immigration purposes. What the local authorities would bondhey would set a high on a normal drive without license case, where you really shouldnt have even been arrested really. 2500 bond, long enough for immigration to put a detainer on them. Then they are never getting out. What we try to do is educate the local Latino Community, which in Montgomery County and Saint Georges county prince very limited,y is to educate them on these opportunities. And we also partner with local Bar Associations. For example in Montgomery County, we have a local pipeline scholar where we try to get more latinos involved in the local Bar Associations and partner with large law firms to afford them the best avenue for the best Career Opportunities in Montgomery County. I will stick around, so if you have any questions, please come talk to me. Thank you. Good afternoon. I am Claire Guthrie gastanaga. I have the privilege as serving as the executive director of being the executive director of csl u virginia. Moderator today. I will give short introductions to rid then we will get the content out in front of you. The aclu and are nationally and worked very hard for equal rights for immigrants. From our perspective, immigrant rights are civil rights and were happy to be in the forefront in many states, including virginia and arizona and other states where there has been a great deal of negative activity, you might say. Helping and we have a very active board or Program Staff regionally in the southwest. Usere very involved in the situations. Our discussion today will be about what is happening in our communities because we do have a broken immigration system that does not seem able to get fixed. Our first speaker will be mr. Juan osuna. Fors the executive director immigration review at the u. S. Justice department. As such, he oversees the Immigration Court system around the country. More importantly for this panel, he is the Justice Departments representative to the process and the executive branch involving the white house and federal agencies to get comprehensive Immigration Reform passed in congress. He will be speaking today on the current state of conference of Immigration Reform legislation, why it is important today, how it would affect the Hispanic Community and others, and our prospects for progress. He also will discuss some of the initiatives the Obama Administration has taken apart from legislation to make the immigration system more responsive to National Needs and priorities. He will be followed by mr. Jaime farrant, the executive director agencya, a nonprofit that helps immigrants with outreach in the pc, maryland, and virginia areas. He will be speaking about the many ways that ayuda together with his clients face is the broken immigration system on a daily basis. Sometimes it unites and sometimes brings longlasting peace. Seesany other times, ayuda firsthand how it keeps families apart, at risk of harm, and in dire need of services. Will speak. Orloff she is the director of the National Immigrant womens project here at American University and is an adjunct or fester here. She is going to be speaking about the impact of the immigration system and its current rules and regulations on victims of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Human Trafficking. After she speaks, mr. Peter assad, who brings his insight both as an immigration attorney directly representing families and businesses, and his experience as the past president of the d. C. Hispanic lawyers , will talk about the attorney being the single most contribute to an outcome in these cases. Lyzkae will hear from delacruz. She is a past president of the association, District Of Columbia. And she will be speaking about the legal limbo many immigrants face, the effect on commerce, and whats the Hispanic Community can do to shape policy. She will bring reallife examples of what she has seen in her law practice and place and context the effect of the broken system on our businesses and commerce. And finally, james fergcadima, the leader of the leading latino Civil Rights Law Firm in the country, you would argue [laughter] im kidding you again. He willbe talking, bring us back to conversations about what is going on at the executive branch level in terms of immigration policy. And we will also be talking about state legislation and litigation to impact all of these issues. So, we have a lot to do. With no further ado, i will turn the podium over to mr. Osuna. Good afternoon. Thank you claire, and to the sponsors for putting this Important Program together. I am going to start a little bit on where we have been with comprehensive Immigration Reform and where we are going with some of the administrative measures the administration has taken while we wait for what is really the important fix, which is a comprehensive effects of our broken immigration system. And it is broken. A little bit about where we started on this. Really the work on comprehensive Immigration Reform started right after the 2012 elections. There was a real groundswell of recognition at the time had come, the time was past due, that the system needed fixing, so the administration really got to work right away in a very robust interagency process to try to put together some ideas on legislation moving forward. That process was pretty much overtaken by the senate. Well, you have heard many times is referred to as the gang of eight, i Bipartisan Group that took it upon themselves to put a cumbrian great said Immigration Reform bill that they could move forward. With a very quick time, the administration looked at that not and decided while it is necessarily a bill we would have written, it certainly hit all of forpresident s priorities Immigration Reform, so the administration very quickly shifted to a policy of supporting the senate bill and trying to do what we could to help establish in the senate. And of course it was very successful in the sense that the senate was able to pass the bill in a very partisan way last june. I pause for a second just to think about that process. We often hear about how washington is dysfunctional and progress, we wish more had been made in a lot of areas. But what the senate did last june with that immigration bill how washingtonof can work. Those of you watching on cspan, you saw a very open, very transparent, robust discussion. Billhe deliberation of the that led to its discussion, going to the senate floor, then being passed again by the full senate. Just to remind you, what the four big pieces of legislation are. Obviously it is a very comprehensive will. Areasre the four large that reflect why this is necessary legislation. Number one, a legalization program. Finding a solution for the 10 million to 12 million undocumented persons in this entry. No one thinks it is best to pursue a policy of massive rotation or anything like that. The senate came up with a process that is meaningful, tough, but leads to a path for citizenship for the majority of those individuals and it is something the Administration Fully supports. Numbered two, worker verification process. Agree the best way of doing this is that the workplace. With a robust and meaningful and effective verification process that can work. Details to lot of that and obviously we dont have time to go into all of what that would actually work look like. Of the the second part bill and the administration is fully behind this. Three, the Legal Immigration system the system by which we select per minute and nonpermanent immigrants to permanent and nonpermanent immigrants to the United States is not complete. There are many workers who want to come near, many students who come here who are not allowed to stay in this country. That does not make sense. The senate bill and other proposals like it would fix that problem. It also, of course, would reduce incentives to cross the border illegally. If there are avenues for them to come legally and work that takes from undocumented immigration to this country. And fourth, the enforcement these. Piece. Largely focused on enforcement at the border. A word about this. The administration has committed a huge amount of resources that the border and the board is more secure than it ever has been. Senate bill contributed to that. There are those who argue the border is not secure and it needs to be secure first. I do not think they are looking at the reality on the border these days where the resources at the border are much more than it ever has been and sets up the thee hopefully before passage of Immigration Reform. Let me add a couple other pieces to the bill that did not get a lot of attention that are important as first the Justice Department goes. They are while they are adding pure immigration equities to the debate, those of us in the Justice Department have a role to play in terms of informing on Immigration Reform to make sure it is the best he can be. One area is civil rights. Our Civil Rights Division has been very active over the last few years and the immigration area. Through the Technical Assistance we get to the senate bill, we have tried to make sure that systems like work verification, e verify, border enforcement were informed as much as possible. For example were the work verification system, we need to be very careful someone does not receive an automatic clearance right away and will not be disadvantaged in some civil rights way while the system is moving forward. That is kind of a civil rights concerned we were able to insert into the bill and have that discussion with staffers and we will continue to do so going forward. The second area i want to highlight is the immigration or system, which is what i oversee at the Justice Department in my day job. The senate bill includes very important reforms to the court system. Not only reforms that are desperately needed, but innovative counsel programs, counsel programs for vulnerable populations appearing in the court system, as well as restoring a fair amount of discretion to Immigration Judges that was taken away in the 1996 act. Our attorney general is fully supportive of that. We believe the system works best when judges have a fair amount of discretion when someone is appearing before them. These senate bill takes us at least part of the way to restoring some of that discretion. Regarding the process forcir, of course you know it is before the house of representatives. It is up to Speaker Boehner and the Leadership Team and the house to bring it forward. I remain an optimist. The white house believes there is still an opportunity to get something meaningful done this year. An optimist remain is because ultimately it is good policy. Ultimately, i think there will be a recognition, even more so than there already has been, that the system is in desperate need of reform, and the senate or Something Like it offers the best method for fixing that system. Somethink it will pass at point and we remain optimistic there will be some action on it ,his year, although admittedly it is getting more challenging as the calendar moves forward and closer to the november elections. A word real quick on administrative procedures the administration has undertaken. In the absence of immigration legislative reform and that also may be coming we have of course tried one of the things we have tried to do in the Immigration Enforcement system is to focus on priorities. If you start with a system that has too many pieces and too few resources, you prioritize. You focus on cases that should have the governments attention in the first instance and they involve public welfare, threats to public safety, serious criminal activity, things like that and try to deemphasize those cases that may involve people that do not have criminal activity. I think it has been a sustained effort we started in 2011, primarily with dhs, with regard discretionorial where dhs was exercising more discretion in terms of the cases they sought to bring to court to get removal orders. While the numbers have not been huge, they have a fair amount of cases that have been closed out. What judges tell me when i theel across the country is concept, the idea of discretion is more ingrained into the system now the new was or has ever been. I think that is the thing. It helps to focus priorities on those cases that really need to have that priority. Of course, the whole issue of priorities and making sure that certain people dont, or are not prioritized for removal received reached a high point with the deferred action for graham the president announced for individuals who may be qualified under the dream act. Childrenought here as and to have remained here ever since. Twoyearam had a period where deportations were suspended. It is coming up for renewal this summer. We will see what the administration does with that. Reviewsident ordered a of current enforcement programs to see if they could be done furtheranely and with attention to prioritization and maybe a ship there. So, dhs is conducting that review there and we will see what that results in. Finally, let me list some Justice Department initiatives that i think could bear some fruit. We will go a lot to issues of fairness and due process. Number one, we are trying to move forward and have moved forward on innovative counsel programs for proceedings that are the attained, that are mentally incompetent, are judged to be mentally incompetent, so they cannot defend themselves so to speak and Immigration Court. We are first time, appointing counsel for that small population. It is fairly significant in terms of the ground it breaks, because we have not done that before. Engaging in an interagency process with the department of Homeland Security and others to increase enforcement against socalled flybynight rios, those flybynight individuals and organizations that hurt people by promising the world and not delivering. We also have the Public Education campaign that again has been quite good across the country. Then finally as we put the bad guys out of business, were trying to make it good it easier for the good guys to step up and represent them. Were trying to make it easier for Public Interest organizations to step in and represent people through what we call the accredit