New York gave every detained immigrant a lawyer. It could serve as a national model.

Biden wants to expand immigrants’ access to legal representation.

Deportation can carry grave consequences. An immigrant might have to leave behind their family, abandon years-long ties to their community, and return to a country where they may have previously faced threats to their life and livelihood — even the kind that might have qualified them for humanitarian protection in the US had they been able to prove it.

But despite those potential costs, they aren’t entitled to a lawyer when facing deportation proceedings in immigration court. The Constitution’s Sixth Amendment,...