Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies
U. of Michigan -Dearborn
PHOTO: UM-D Websitew
https://cmsny.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ab341dd06620fe24c64cc2f00&id=8c2b818989&e=be87a1d505
By Maya P. Barak, University of Michigan-Dearborn:
This quote sums it all up for me:
. . . .
Ultimately, perceptions of justice within immigration court merit examination not despite the fact that due process can be used to manipulate images of fairness, but because of it.
This study highlights just some of the many problems running deep within the US immigration system. Current interpretation and technology practices reveal the promise of justice in immigration court is little more than a façade—at least from immigration attorneys’ perspectives. Further exploration of due process within immigration court is needed to determine whether or not addressing existing interpretation and technology problems through the reforms proposed here would improve immigrants’ access to justice in a meaningful way. Drawing inspiration from movements to abolish the death penalty, prison, and the police, meaningful immigration court reform efforts should also reduce the need for an immigration court altogether.
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When I arrived at the Arlington Immigration Court in 2003, I found the contract interpreters to be excellent — some truly outstanding. A key part of the “Due Process Team.”
Before I retired in 2016, however, EOIR “re-competed” the interpretation contract and awarded it to a company that did not appear to have sufficient qualified interpreters already on staff to perform the functions. That company offered to employ most of the interpreters of the “deposed contractor,” but evidently at lower salaries and less favorable terms. The predictable result: Some of the best interpreters left and went to Article III Courts, State Courts, or other types of interpretation offering better wages and working conditions.
“[T]he promise of justice in immigration court is little more than a façade!” This bears repeating, over and over, until we get the radical due process reforms and long overdue personnel changes we need at EOIR.
This isn’t exactly “new news” to Garland and friends! Shortly after the “Ashcroft Purge of ’03,” Peter Levinson wrote a scholarly, yet scathing, expose’ of the “farce of justice at the BIA” entitled “The Facade Of Quasi-Judicial Independence In Immigration Appellate Adjudication.”
Nearly two decades later, now almost a year into the second “post-Ashcroft” Dem Administration, and still no effective corrective actions at EOIR! Indeed, whatever remnants of due process might have existed in 2003 have deteriorated steadily since then, despite nearly nine years of Dem Administrations and enough weighty evidence to sink a battleship. During that time, thousands of lives and American families have been ruined and several generations of immigration attorneys driven to despair (some quitting the field) by a system any first year law student could see is totally out of compliance with Constitutional due process and fundamental fairness!
🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
11-12-21