Category: Deepti Hajela

https://apple.news/A9aA4TWFpQoSBoXVeAOv_Rg

By KATE BRUMBACK, DEEPTI HAJELA and AMY TAXIN, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

In a locked, guarded courtroom in a compound surrounded by razor wire, Immigration Judge Jerome Rothschild waits — and stalls.

A Spanish interpreter is running late because of a flat tire. Rothschild tells the five immigrants before him that he’ll take a break before the proceedings even start. His hope: to delay just long enough so these immigrants won’t have to sit by, uncomprehendingly, as their futures are decided.

“We are, untypically, without an interpreter,” Rothschild tells a lawyer who enters the courtroom at the Stewart Detention Center after driving down from Atlanta, about 140 miles away.

In its disorder, this is, in fact, a typical day in the chaotic, crowded and confusing U.S. immigration court system of which Rothschild’s courtroom is just one small outpost.

Shrouded in secrecy, the immigration courts run by the U.S. Department of Justice have been dysfunctional for years and have only gotten worse. A surge in the arrival of asylum seekers and the Trump administration’s crackdown on the Southwest border and illegal immigration have pushed more people into deportation proceedings, swelling the court’s docket to 1 million cases.

“It is just a cumbersome, huge system, and yet administration upon administration comes in here and tries to use the system for their own purposes,” says Immigration Judge Amiena Khan in New York City, speaking in her role as vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

“And in every instance, the system doesn’t change on a dime, because you can’t turn the Titanic around.”

The Associated Press visited immigration courts in 11 different cities more than two dozen times during a 10-day period in late fall. In courts from Boston to San Diego, reporters observed scores of hearings that illustrated how crushing caseloads and shifting policies have landed the courts in unprecedented turmoil:

–Chasing efficiency, immigration judges double- and triple-book hearings that can’t possibly be completed, leading to numerous cancellations. Immigrants get new court dates, but not for years.

–Young children are everywhere and sit on the floor or stand or cry in cramped courtrooms. Many immigrants don’t know how to fill out forms, get records translated or present a case.

— Frequent changes in the law and rules for how judges manage their dockets make it impossible to know what the future holds when immigrants finally have their day in court. Paper files are often misplaced, and interpreters are often missing.

In Georgia, the interpreter assigned to Rothschild’s courtroom ends up making it to work, but the hearing sputters moments later when a lawyer for a Mexican man isn’t available when Rothschild calls her to appear by phone. Rothschild is placed on hold, and a bouncy beat overlaid with synthesizers fills the room.

He moves on to other cases — a Peruvian asylum seeker, a Cuban man seeking bond — and punts the missing lawyer’s case to the afternoon session.

This time, she’s there when he calls, and apologizes for not being available earlier, explaining through a hacking cough she’s been sick.

But by now the interpreter has moved on to another courtroom, putting Rothschild in what he describes as the “uneasy position” of holding court for someone who can’t understand what’s going on.

“I hate for a guy to leave a hearing having no idea what happened,” he says, and asks the lawyer to relay the results of the proceedings to her client in Spanish.

After some discussion, the lawyer agrees to withdraw the man’s bond petition and refile once she can show he’s been here longer than the government believes, which could help his chances.

For now, the man returns to detention.

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link.  Yes, there’s lots of blame to go around: Administrations of both parties, an irresponsible Congress, several decades of underfunding and poor management.

But that doesn’t change these simple truths:

• We have a scofflaw regime that glories in committing “crimes against humanity” directed at migrants;
• We have a feckless Congress that won’t legislate responsibly as long as “Moscow Mitch” McConnell and his Trump-toady GOP control the Senate;
• The only branch of Government that could put a stop to this unconstitutional and unconscionable mess is the Article III Federal Judiciary;
• And, this highly privileged group of jurists, the only public officials I’m aware of with the “protective insulation” of life tenure, has stood by and watched their fellow humans being “thrown to the lions” in this disgraceful display of unconstitutional injustice.

Do your duty Article IIIs and put an end to the EOIR Clown Show! History is recording your failures to act, every day!

Due Process Forever; Clown Courts 🤡 and Their Complicit Enablers, Never!

PWS

01-17-20