Legal Affairs Writer
ABA Journal
Amanda Robert reports for the ABA Journal:
ABA President Judy Perry Martinez joined leaders from Kids in Need of Defense on Wednesday in condemning a new pilot program at the Houston Immigration Court that requires all cases involving unaccompanied immigrant children to be heard via video teleconference.
Under the program, the Trump administration calls for the testimony of unaccompanied children to be streamed from Houston to Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Sirce Owen, who will hear cases in Atlanta. The program will begin March 9 and last for about two months.
“What is about to happen in Houston is wrong,” Martinez said during a briefing on the program. “It will hurt children and is contrary to the American pursuit of justice. The American Bar Association opposes the policy, and we need action against it now.”
Martinez explained that the ABA Commission on Immigration has extensive experience with children in immigrant courts and created standards of care and conduct based on its experience. She said that among those standards is a strong opposition to video teleconferencing in immigration proceedings involving children.
She recalled visiting a children’s shelter during one of her trips to volunteer with the ABA’s South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project. She thought then about what runs through the mind of an unaccompanied child who just entered the United States and must go to court.
“For a child, it must be truly troubling, if not terrifying—especially for a child who doesn’t speak English, who doesn’t know what to expect in a U.S. courtroom and who may not have a lawyer or other trusted adult to guide him or her,” she said. “Imagine how much more bewildering that experience must be for a child in a courtroom with no judge in person, live there with them. Only a small TV screen.”
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Read the rest of the article at the above link.
Ah, picking on children, rather than trying to insure Due Process. There’s a name for those who pick on the most vulnerable.
PWS
03-07-20
This is one of the most egregious attacks on the most vulnerable humans on earth. Little children being thrown to the wolves, expected to make their case by video streaming to a talking head in Atlanta? What kind of monster dreamed up this absolute disgrace? There will be a special place in the afterlife for all those who participated in this latest scheme to deliver the coup de grace to a group who has already been thrown under the bus. Now they have designed the last wheel to roll over them, and crush them to death. Let’s vote these animals out of office in November 2020, and try to restore some sense of humanity to our country. I am disgusted.
Yup! We need regime change and an independent Immigration Court with judges who understand asylum law and are willing to stand up for due process and the rights of asylum seekers and other migrants, as their oaths of office require them to do! Also, we need competent, professional court administration answerable to judges, willing to work cooperatively with NGOs, the private bar, and ICE, and committed to promoting due process and high-level service to the public.
And, with the elimination of anti-migrant bias and “haste makes waste” gimmicks intended merely to speed up the “deportation railroad,” the Immigration Courts will finally be able to institute “best practices” and achieve due process with efficiency.
A fair system built on due process, honesty, scholarship, and professionalism, would encourage creativity and “best practices,” and be better not only for migrants and their representatives, but also for ICE and legitimate immigration enforcement.