Cook County public defenders have represented about a dozen people facing deportation proceedings in the first two months of a new program aimed at expanding free legal services to immigrants, officials announced Monday.
The program, called the Immigration Unit Pilot, has been in the works since 2020 when the Cook County Board allocated money for the public defender’s office to provide legal services to immigrants facing deportation. In late February, the unit — which includes two staff attorneys, a supervising attorney and a paralegal — started taking on cases of those facing deportation proceedings in Chicago’s immigration court.
