The New York Times published a profile this week of a professor in Florida, who has been a certified interpreter for migrants in U.S. courts for the past 23 years. The interpreter, Erik Camayd-Freixas, has published a 14-page essay which you can read in its entirety (here), saying that most defendants "did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived."

The move is rare because he has broken a code of confidentiality among interpreters.

From the article—

In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.

He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.

“The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on,” Professor Camayd-Freixas said in the interview. “The great majority were under the impression they were there because of being illegal in the country, not because of Social Security fraud.”