The bleak state of the immigration court system

markus-spiske-1475927-unsplashA recent article by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) outlines the current state of the immigration court system and it is bleak: “In a report released earlier this year, the American Bar Association described the U.S. immigration court system as facing an ‘existential crisis,’ an ‘irredeemably dysfunctional’ system ‘on the brink of collapse.'”

The report notes a backlog of 900,000 cases quoting The Economist: “People will die of old age in America before they ever acquire the legal right to live in America. This is an extraordinary failure to govern.”

According to the article, Trump’s new regulations have just exacerbated the problem, comparing the complexity of the immigration courts system to the tax code. They also note that the massive backlog of cases “have led to judges rushing to complete cases, compromising their ethical obligations and violating immigrants’ due process rights…”

Dallas Newspaper Reports From ‘Chaos’ Of Backlogged Immigration Court

NM_01Patnaik1The Dallas Morning News has an important new report on the U.S. Immigration Court backlog, highlighting the case of a Korean man who “… has been in America long enough to raise two sons and run a family-owned doughnut shop in Irving. After years of worrying, he thinks he’s about to find out his fate. Things look promising. But [the judge] sets a merit hearing for Dec. 6, 2017.”

Reporter Dianne Solis makes the point that the man is “… caught in an immigration court system that is bursting with huge caseloads and stressed by a seemingly endless shortage of judges. The U.S. immigration court backlog is at a record 474,000 cases — nearly triple the number from a decade ago. The average case now takes two years to wind through the courts. Some can take five.”
One interesting think is that the report notes that the Immigration Court backlog “annoys both the political left and right. U.S. Rep. Jack Ratcliffe, R-Heath, called it a ‘de facto amnesty’ at a recent congressional hearing. Immigrants live in the U.S. for years waiting to find out whether they can, well, live in the U.S.”

But, the report continues, “… Democrats complain that the courts need more money to operate smoothly. The nation’s immigration courts have long functioned like an orphaned child of the immigration system. The courts’ budget equals about 2 percent of total federal funding for immigration law enforcement this fiscal year. Underfunding the courts ‘undermines justice,’ U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said at the same hearing.”

The DMN also backgrounds that Immigration Court is civil, so there’s no guarantee of an attorney as their would be in criminal court. That’s important because, Solis notes, “… an unrepresented immigrant has a greater chance of losing, of being ordered removed from the U.S. That came into harsh light recently with the surge of Central American mothers with children. In a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University nonprofit, of such cases, about a quarter of those who were represented by attorneys were allowed to stay in the U.S. Only 1.5 percent of those who didn’t have attorneys were allowed to stay.”
The story is basically an indictment of the whole Immigration Court process with the only good point being a promise of more judges soon if certain things work out.

Read it here: Chaos, backlogs straining immigration courts