Deportation order for 11-year-old draws attention to courts’ woes

Laura Maradiaga-Alvarado, 11, was ordered deported without her family. Photo credit: Fiel Houston as reported by NBC News.

Laura Maradiaga-Alvarado, 11, was ordered deported without her family. Photo credit: Fiel Houston as reported by NBC News.

The near-deportation of a solitary 11-year-old child earlier this year highlights, critics say, the backlogs and turmoil surrounding federal immigration courts.

“A federal immigration judge in Houston signed a deportation order for Laura Maradiaga-Alvarado, originally from El Salvador, on March 12,” explains an NBC News article.

In the wake of publicity about the child’s plight, the judge ordered a new hearing scheduled for May 20, officials said.

“The deportation order has been attributed to a mistake made after a hearing scheduled in February for the girl, her mother and her sister was delayed by the government shutdown,” the article notes.

A March report by the American Bar Association indicated “that since its 2010 review of the court system, things had worsened ‘considerably,’” NBC News reports.

“The same issues identified then persist nearly a decade later: inadequate staffing, training and hiring; growing backlogs; inconsistent decision patterns among judges, particularly in asylum cases, and adoption of video-conference technology that impedes fair hearings. The situation, it said, has been exacerbated by years of congressional inaction while enforcement has increased under the Trump administration,” the article notes.

Report Outlines Why NY Has Huge Immigration Court Backlog

Photo credit: WNYC Audio Report, 1/17/17

Photo credit: WNYC Audio Report, 1/17/17

New York’s WNYC radio has an excellent report on why the Big Apple’s immigration courts are backed up, noting that more than a half-million cases are pending nationwide and tens of thousands of those are in NYC. The reporter visits one of the city’s 28 immigration courts, which are actually not federal courts but administrative functions of the Justice Department. The story follows one immigrant and notes ” the whole process took about five minutes for each case, and Khan was scheduling future court appearances as late as August of 2018. This isn’t so bad given, that Schmidt said he was scheduling hearings for 2021 before retiring last summer.”

The reporting is in the context of Donald Trump presidency and any attempt to increase the pace of court-ordered deportations. The take-away is that there’s no real capacity to increase or even keep pace

See the story here: Why New York’s Immigration Courts Are Overwhelmed

Judge Says Toddlers Can Grasp Law, Represent Themselves

A child of migrant workers in Five Points, Calif. Judge Jack Weil says his comments on youths defending themselves in immigration court were "taken out of context." (Photo Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times Report, 3/6.16)

A child of migrant workers in Five Points, Calif. Judge Jack Weil says his comments on youths defending themselves in immigration court were “taken out of context.” (Photo Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times Report, 3/6/16)

A federal immigration judge in Virginia, who helps train other such judges, is making headlines for asserting that even toddlers can defend themselves in court without counsel. The Los Angeles Times is among those quoting from a court transcript that is part of an ACLU case: “I’ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience,” Judge Jack Weil said. ‘They get it. It’s not the most efficient, but it can be done.'”

The LAT duly notes that “… in immigration court, there is no guarantee of counsel for adults or children. Advocates for immigrants have long argued that a person’s ability to make informed decisions — and their chances of being allowed to stay in the U.S. — are enhanced if an attorney represents them.”

The story also offers this context: “A total of 20,455 unaccompanied youths were caught at the border from October through the end of January, more than double the number during the same period the previous year, which also saw an increase over the year before that, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Youths started streaming in large numbers across the border illegally during the summer of 2014.”

Read the fallout here: http://www.latimes.com/nation/immigration/la-na-immigration-judge-20160306-story.html