headline: Massachusetts $5M immigrant legal aid program at capacity as removal cases top 126,000 slug: 2026-04-16-massachusetts-5m-im…

  • The Massachusetts Access to Counsel Initiative reflects a structural gap in federal immigration law: removal proceedings are classified a…
  • A Massachusetts state program that launched at the end of 2025 to provide free legal representation to immigrants in removal proceedings …
  • The Massachusetts Access to Counsel Initiative MACI, funded at $5 million by the state Legislature, was created to address a structural g…
  • “We know that there is so much need for legal services for immigrants right now,” said Elizabeth Sweet, executive director of the Massach…

The Massachusetts Access to Counsel Initiative reflects a structural gap in federal immigration law: removal proceedings are classified as civil matters, meaning people facing deportation have a right to an attorney but are not entitled to one at government expense.

A Massachusetts state program that launched at the end of 2025 to provide free legal representation to immigrants in removal proceedings reached capacity less than five months after launch, with a program hotline receiving 6,000 calls since December but finding attorneys for fewer than half of eligible callers, as pending removal cases against state residents topped 126,000, program officials said.

The Massachusetts Access to Counsel Initiative (MACI), funded at $5 million by the state Legislature, was created to address a structural gap in federal immigration law: removal proceedings are classified as civil matters, meaning people facing deportation have a right to an attorney but are not entitled to one at government expense.

“We know that there is so much need for legal services for immigrants right now,” said Elizabeth Sweet, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), the nonprofit managing the program. “For so many immigrants going into immigration court right now, the stakes feel incredibly high.”

Demand outpacing capacity

As of February, 126,724 removal cases were pending against Massachusetts residents in immigration court, with almost 52% of those residents having legal representation, according to data from TRAC Immigration, a data analysis nonprofit. In New Bedford alone, 2,271 residents faced removal cases, of which 59% had representation.

The MACI hotline — reached at 508-505-4588 — received 6,000 calls since December, found 697 callers eligible for services, and assigned attorneys to 461 of them, Susan Church, chief operating officer at the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants and program coordinator, told the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Ways and Means.

“We knew at the outset of this program that the need would far exceed the resources,” Church said. “We knew that at some point in time there would be a waitlist.”

MIRA described the situation in a recent newsletter as “programs are at capacity right now, with demand outstripping capacity.”

A shortage of available attorneys compounds the pressure. Only 114 immigration attorneys are listed in the American Immigration Lawyers Association directory for Massachusetts — a figure Church described as incomplete.

“We are extremely under-resourced in immigration attorneys,” Church said. The program has recruited attorneys from out of state and trained attorneys from other practice areas to work in immigration court, she added.

How the program operates

MIRA manages the program under a $4.2 million contract with the state Office for Refugees and Immigrants signed in November. The program places 24 attorneys at 14 organizations across Massachusetts and at several private law firms, and runs intake systems at two New England detention facilities: Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Plymouth and the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island.

Immigrants can contact the MACI hotline or visit participating organizations for an in-person intake. To qualify, a person must have household income at or below 125% of the federal poverty level and be seeking qualifying forms of immigration relief — including asylum, Temporary Protected Status, adjustment of status, or Special Immigrant Juvenile status. Those with open charges or convictions for 15 listed offenses, including certain felonies and firearms-related misdemeanors, are not eligible.

Each attorney is expected to carry 30 to 35 clients. Alma Cothias, an attorney at Southborough-based Massa Viana Law, one of the participating firms, said she already has 32 clients and expects that number to grow.

“At the beginning, we were getting people from at most a half-hour away,” Cothias said. “But recently, I have been getting clients from as far away as Springfield, and their hearing is in Connecticut.”

António Massa Viana, managing attorney at the firm, said the program fills a gap that has long left low-income immigrants unrepresented.

“We are now able to offer, to people who have not been able to afford legal representation before, quality legal representation in immigration courts,” Massa Viana said.

Funding trajectory

The Legislature created the program last summer, after federal agencies detained 7,000 Massachusetts immigrants and deported many of them. The federal government’s mass deportation campaign reportedly detained over 390,000 immigrants nationally in its first year.

Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget maintains the program’s funding at $5 million. Senate President Karen Spilka said she wants to add an extra $1 million this fiscal year, bringing the allocation to $6 million. MIRA has said it is aiming for $15 million for the following fiscal year.

Immigration attorney Robin Nice, who represented one immigrant detained by federal agents, said the structure of immigration court places unrepresented respondents at a compounding disadvantage: immigration judges and prosecutors both work for the same employer, the U.S. Attorney General.

“This is a political instrument, so to readers who may be thinking everyone has a fair shot, they don’t,” Nice said. “It’s not one against one, it’s two against one.”

Nice said representation is a threshold condition, not an enhancement.

“It’s an absolute bare minimum requirement to have an attorney,” Nice said. “There’s no fair shot unless they have one.”