Peter Schey, a committed advocate for the human rights of migrants crossing the southern border, who won groundbreaking legal cases demanding humane care for undocumented children and the rights of migrants to school and health care in states that tried to block those services ban, died April 2nd in Los Angeles. He was 77 years old.
His death in the hospital was due to complications from lymphoma, said Melinda Bird, a former wife.
Mr. Schey (pronounced “Shay”), himself an immigrant from South Africa, ran his law practice as a small nonprofit group in Los Angeles and made a big impression, even as his workaholism and impatience drove away other public interest lawyers who tried to work him. He took over both the Democratic and Republican governments in Washington.
He led the legal team that negotiated the landmark Flores Settlement Agreement, a 1997 government measure to protect detained unaccompanied migrant children. He fought the Trump administration when it tried to scrap the deal 21 years later.
He also argued and won the case by opposing California’s Proposition 187, a voter-approved initiative that aimed to deny social services to undocumented immigrants; The victory was seen as a political turning point in the rise of Latino electoral power.
“He dedicated his career to the legal representation of vulnerable groups who had no other way to speak for themselves and who were at the mercy of the government,” said Hope Frye, an immigration lawyer who sometimes worked with Mr. Schey. “I don’t care how much the government pushed its heels in, he hasn’t given an inch.”
The Flores case led to one of the most profound changes in U.S. immigration policy in the last half century. Mr. Schey and a colleague, Carlos Holguin, represented Jenny Flores, who fled El Salvador alone at age 15 at the height of the civil war there in the 1980s, only to be detained by U.S. authorities in a motel with both of their adults are gendered, subjected to a strip search and have no access to school or a playground.
In the Flores agreement, the government agreed to detain unaccompanied migrant children in secure conditions and release them to a family member, guardian or licensed care facility within 20 days.
Doris Meissner, the former Clinton administration official who signed the agreement with Mr. Schey, said in an interview: “He was very effective at holding the government accountable.”
Little did Mr. Schey and Mr. Holguin know that enforcing the Flores decision through their pro bono practice would occupy them for decades.
In 2014, when the Obama administration built large detention centers to hold families fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, Mr. Schey and Mr. Holguin went back to court. In a significant expansion of the Flores deal, a federal judge ruled that the 20-day detention limit also applies to children accompanied by their parents. In fact, the government was forced to release adults and their children to await immigration hearings.
It was those restrictions that led officials in President Donald J. Trump’s administration in 2018 to separate migrant children from their parents in favor of long-term detention of adults.
The policy caused such an outcry that it was repealed. Trump officials condemned the Flores deal as a “loophole” that attracted waves of undocumented families.
“Treating children humanely and not detaining them indefinitely in often intolerable conditions is not a loophole in the law, as the Secretary of Homeland Security claims,” Schey told The New York Times in 2018. “It is the way civilized nations treat innocent children.”
In 2020, a federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration could not detain families indefinitely, citing the Flores restrictions.
In another of Mr. Schey’s cases with far-reaching impact, he went to court just days after California voters passed Proposition 187 in 1994, which barred undocumented immigrants from receiving non-emergency health care and other government services. Perhaps the most notable proposal would have kept 270,000 children out of public schools.
As a result of Mr. Schey’s case, a federal court declared the law unconstitutional. Although nearly 60 percent of voters approved Proposition 187 and Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, made it a centerpiece of his reelection campaign, a majority of the state’s Latino voters turned decisively toward Democrats who opposed the measure, marking a lasting shift This is intended to transform California into a reliably blue state.
Part of the legal reasoning that invalidated Prop 187 was found in a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case also argued by Mr. Schey and Mr. Holguin involving a Texas law that allowed public schools to exclude children who were in the United States without legal status.
In the 5-4 decision in Plyler v. Doe wrote Judge William J. Brennan Jr. that by denying education to children, Texas “has encouraged the creation and perpetuation of an illiterate underclass within our borders, thereby certainly contributing to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare.” and crime.”
“It is difficult to identify many opinions throughout the history of the Supreme Court that have deeper consequences in more important areas,” Justin Driver, a Yale law professor, wrote of Plyler v. Doe in his book “The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Spirit.”
Peter Anthony Schey was born on March 23, 1947 in Durbin, South Africa. His father, Erwin Schey, was a secular Jew who fled Germany with his wife Gertle (Schunzel) Schey before the outbreak of World War II to escape Nazi persecution.
When Peter was 15, the family moved to San Francisco, where he graduated from Lowell High School. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in 1969, and later the California Western School of Law in San Diego, graduating in 1973. For five years, he worked for the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, serving low-income immigrants.
His former wife, Ms. Bird, said he was motivated to defend immigrants because of his own immigrant status and his parents’ ordeal as refugees.
Mr. Schey is survived by a sister, Nicky Arden, and two children, Michael and Alyssa Schey, from his second marriage, which also ended in divorce. His and wife Bird’s daughter, Alexis Bird Schey, who was disabled, died in 2013 at age 28.
Mr. Schey’s concern for teenage immigrants went beyond the courtroom. In 2002, he opened Casa Libre, a group shelter for homeless boys ages 12 to 17, in a mansion in the Westlake neighborhood donated by the city of Los Angeles.
But Mr. Schey apparently failed in his attempt to combine his career as a lawyer and social worker. In 2019, the Los Angeles Times documented that Casa Libre had been cited for standards violations 33 times since 2017, more than any other residence hall in Los Angeles County.
“Is it perfect?” he replied. “No, it’s not perfect. Is it better than being homeless on the streets? No question.” He promised to improve the conditions.
Mr. Holguin, who worked alongside Mr. Schey since 1977 – and was the only lawyer to stay with him for more than a few years – said Mr. Schey was creative, ambitious, demanding and difficult to be with.
“He wants people to work like him, all night long,” he said. “He would get impatient if people didn’t see things his way.”
But Mr. Holguin said Mr. Schey could also be remarkably friendly. In the years before homelessness became commonplace in most Los Angeles neighborhoods, an alcoholic man regularly fell asleep outside his office.
“Peter picked him up, took him in, fed him, cleaned him and gave him clothes,” Mr Holguin said. “He did this over and over again.”
Source link
2024-04-25 22:15:54
www.nytimes.com
