Larry Krasner.

Taking a cue from his counterpart in Brooklyn, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has appointed an attorney to focus on evaluating the immigration ramifications of the office's prosecutions.

On Thursday, Krasner announced the appointment of attorney Caleb Arnold to become the office's first immigration counsel. Arnold, a former immigration attorney with Green and Spiegel, is expected to advise the office about immigration issues in an effort to minimize the effects that a criminal conviction for a low-level offense may have on a person's immigration status.

At a press conference Thursday, Krasner, who promised sweeping reforms for the District Attorney's Office including ramping up efforts to resist the recent clampdown on unauthorized immigrants, said the move was part of a broader effort aimed at protecting vulnerable communities and allowing them to play a greater role in the criminal justice system.

“You have to be very careful about your policies and what you criminalize because you may be helping crime rather than discouraging it, and we want to be discouraging it,” he said.

The decision to bring on a attorney to focus on immigration issues follows in the footsteps of Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, who brought on two immigration specialists to his prosecutors office last spring. Those attorneys work in the Immigrant Affairs Unit, which includes other assistant district attorneys, and their work has focused on advising about the immigration ramifications of plea bargains for misdemeanor offenses.

“The success of a similar policy in Brooklyn—where our special counsels advised in over 200 cases so far to reach immigration-neutral outcomes—proves that greater equity does not jeopardize public safety,” Gonzales said in a statement.

In Philadelphia Arnold is the only person in the office focusing solely on these issues, although a spokesman for the Philadelphia DA's office said that could change depending on the need. Arnold is set to begin working at the office on Monday.

Although Arnold is expected to develop the role immigration counsel will play for the office, according to Krasner, the work will likely come into play more during guilty plea negotiations and when making sentencing recommendations.

According to several attorneys, Brooklyn and Philadelphia appear to be the only two offices that have attorneys specifically tasked with looking at immigration issues. However, according to New York University professor Nancy Morawetz, prosecutors and the defense bar have become increasingly interested in the consequences that prosecutions may have on undocumented immigrants, particularly in the wake of the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision Padilla v. Kentucky, which held that attorneys have a constitutional obligation to tell their clients when a guilty plea carries a risk of deportation.

Prosecutors often don't seek jail time for minor offenses, she said, but without an understanding of immigration law, considerations aimed at mitigating the effects of a harsh sentence may backfire as some sentences can have lasting implications in the immigration context while others do not.

“Prosecutor's offices might pursue a course that is not what they want to do,” she said. “People in these prosecutors offices have the capacity to be giving more sophisticated advice to serve a prosecutorial objective.”

Labe Richman, a New York defense attorney who often has immigration issues arise in the cases he handles, said immigration law is extremely complicated, and it is not unusual that a charge carrying a lesser sentence ends up having a greater impact in an immigration context. Some seemingly minor offenses that may only carry a small fine could result in a lifetime ban against applying for a green card, he said.

“So the prosecutor, with their immigration attorney at hand, can say you've been here for 30 years, you have a family. Instead of barring you for life, we could bring another deal and have you plea to some other charge that's cognizable out of your case,” he said.

The ultimate sentence, he said, could result in more jail time, or more probation, but it won't result in any permanent implications for the defendant's immigration proceedings.

Richman said that defense associations have been increasingly bringing on immigration attorneys, and, even before the Brooklyn DA's Office announced it would be bringing on immigration attorneys, some prosecutors offices have been drafting guidelines so line prosecutors have a better understanding of the immigration implications of the criminal charges they are bringing.

“I've seen different memos and different law review articles talking about it because the community is going to lose confidence in us if we … have immigration consequences that are disproportionate to the penal consequences,” he said.