As the city\u2019s longest public defender strike since 1982 enters its second week, one immigration attorney will be crossing the picket line to return to work Tuesday in what her union has called an \u201cimpossible\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d choice.<\/p>\n
The Bronx Defenders<\/a> union, which has been on strike since July 27<\/a>, said a striking immigration attorney will go back to work Tuesday for a hearing for a client that could end with their deportation if they don\u2019t have representation after her supervisor\u2019s request to adjourn the hearing until she was back was shot down by a federal judge \u2013 something the union alleges the supervisor should have been able to handle themself and knew would happen if they asked to postpone the hearing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt just put the attorney in a really untenable situation,\u201d Jessica Coffrin-St. Julien, another Bronx Defenders immigration attorney, told amNewYork.\n<\/p>\n The union says the immigration attorney in question had prepared everything for the hearing prior to the strike so that a supervising attorney could step in and handle it on her behalf, the policy the organization is using across the board while attorneys have walked off the job.<\/p>\n What happened instead, the union said, was that the supervisor asked a federal immigration judge known for forcing striking attorneys to appear in court to adjourn the hearing until the striking attorney could appear for her client instead of handling it themself. That federal judge subsequently denied the request to adjourn the hearing and issued an order naming the striking immigration attorney and ordering her to personally come to court to represent the client.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey sought a continuance, knowing it would likely result in a court order that would basically force one of our members into crossing a picket line,\u201d said Coffrin-St. Julien. \u201cIt just feels like weaponizing our care for immigration court cases to get us to cross the picket line.\u201d<\/p>\n If she doesn\u2019t appear in court Tuesday, the union said she was nervous her client wouldn\u2019t have representation at all, which could lead to his deportation, so she\u2019s agreed to cross the picket line.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bronx Defenders management said that if she returns to work for the hearing, she won\u2019t be able to go back on strike. Hu said that felt like it proves the union\u2019s point that their management can\u2019t handle cases without them.<\/p>\n Bronx Defenders management did not respond to a request for comment specifically about this situation. Instead, management commented on the strike generally, saying their current offer includes pay raises across every staff role and expands benefits throughout the organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal remains an agreement that brings our staff back together and protects the quality of defense the people of the Bronx deserve,\u201d Executive Director Juval Scott said in a statement. \u201cWe remain hopeful that such an agreement is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n The union and management remain divided over pay \u2013 particularly the union\u2019s desire for social worker pay to remain \u201ctethered\u201d to attorney pay so both positions are well compensated and the union\u2019s ask for a 3% annual cost of living increase to their salaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n They also remain at odds over certain policies, including the union\u2019s desire for protections for non-citizen workers, like not allowing ICE into their buildings, for management to not track attorney locations, student loan support and for hybrid work to be more frequently allowed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bronx Defenders attorney bargaining committee member Abhi Hu said management hasn\u2019t been meeting with them as much as they\u2019d like, which is making it hard to know where to find common ground.<\/p>\n The parties are due back at the bargaining table tomorrow for three hours. They remain on strike, alongside the Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem, which has been striking since July 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the city\u2019s longest public defender strike since 1982 enters its second week, one immigration attorney will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,90638,2301,1213,2710,9,24,63,61628,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-312823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-bronx-defenders","tag-immigration","tag-labor","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-public-defenders","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}