https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/31/politics/immigration-court-fake-dates/index.html
Updated 10:15 PM ET, Thu January 31, 2019
Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a U.S. immigration office with numerous courtrooms Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)(CNN)More than 1,000 immigrants showed up at courts across the United States on Thursday for hearings they’d been told were scheduled but didn’t exist, a lawyers’ group said, as the Justice Department struggles with an overloaded immigration court system and the effects of the recently ended partial government shutdown.
Immigration attorneys reported that lines wrapped around the court building in San Francisco, a line stretched for blocks to get into the court in Los Angeles and hundreds of people waited outside the court in Newark, New Jersey.Thursday’s problems are the latest example of US immigration authorities issuing a large number of inaccurate notices ordering immigrants to appear at hearings that, it later turns out, had never been scheduled.Lawyers first told CNN last year that they’d observed a wave of what they call “fake dates” pop up. For instance, lawyers reported examples of notices to appear issued for nonexistent dates, such as September 31, and for times of day when courts aren’t open, such as midnight.“The immigration courts have reached a new crisis point,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The group said it tracked over 1,000 people showing up in courts Thursday with inaccurate hearing notices.
In Los Angeles, immigrants who had “fake dates” were given paperwork acknowledging they’d appeared at the immigration court, according to attorney Jonathan Vallejo, who provided this redacted copy of one such form.‘I’m afraid and nervous’
Inside a packed waiting room at the Arlington Immigration Court on Thursday, confused immigrants clutching paperwork asked lawyers for help. Some said they’d driven hours to get to court and had awakened at 3:30 a.m. to arrive on time.“I’m left with a question mark. I’m wondering, ‘Why?'” said Bigail Alfaro, 39, who’s seeking asylum with her two children. “I’m afraid and nervous.”As she prepared to head into court for a scheduled hearing, immigration attorney Eileen Blessinger found herself fielding questions and asking court officials to stamp paperwork to provide proof that immigrants had shown up.“What happened?” one woman asked her.“You don’t have court, because they made a mistake,” Blessinger said.At an immigration court in Atlanta, a crowd of around 40 people were turned away, almost one by one, by a Spanish-speaking court employee telling people with notices that their hearings had been “postponed.”Among those showing up for court were parents with small children, some dressed only with hooded sweatshirts and covering themselves with blankets, with the temperature in Atlanta in the mid-20s.“They told us they would send us another citation by mail,” said a man named Jose who asked to be identified only by his first name. “But who knows when? And the hard part is they don’t let us know with enough time, enough time to prepare ourselves.”In Los Angeles, immigration attorney Jonathan Vallejo said he saw 30-40 people ushered into a room where they were told they didn’t have hearings and given forms acknowledging they’d appeared at the court.“It’s absurd what’s going on,” he said.Problems were also seen in Dallas, Miami and San Diego, Lynch said.The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the division of the Justice Department that runs the immigration courts, said the weather and government shutdown were partially to blame.The office “was unable to proceed with hearings for some respondents who believed they had hearings scheduled,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “In some cases, the cases had been rescheduled to another date, but the lapse in appropriations prevented the immigration courts from issuing new hearing notices far enough in advance of the prior hearing date.”An ongoing problem
President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nation’s immigration system, specifically taking issue with the practice of releasing immigrants while they await their court dates. To remedy that, his administration has sought to hire more immigration judges in the hopes of unclogging the court.But that has not happened — there are 409 immigration judges nationwide but nearly 80 vacancies — and the number of cases continues to grow.For years, the number of pending cases has been slowly creeping up, as more are added to the docket than can be addressed at any given time. There are more than 800,000 cases pending, according to the Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions also created a quota system that requires judges to clear at least 700 cases a year in order to receive “satisfactory” performance evaluations. Between 2011 and 2016, judges completed 678 cases a year on average.Judge Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, described judges in Los Angeles coming back this week to boxes filled to the rim with mail that had piled up over the course of the 35-day partial government shutdown.“What this does is it adds greater delay to the cases. We were shortchanged five or four weeks of time,” Tabaddor told CNN. “Not only were we not able to hear cases that were previously cases that were scheduled, but it’s going to take time to regroup.”Immigration attorneys say the instances of mistakenly scheduled hearings unfairly burden immigrants and create more pressure on a system that’s already suffering from a crushing backlog.“Imagine the stress of facing potential deportation,” North Carolina immigration attorney Jeremy McKinney said on Twitter. “You’re told show up in court or be ordered deported in your absence. You drive hundreds of miles & wait in line only to be told the court date was not real. ‘Sorry for the minor logistical errors.’ “Atlanta immigration attorney Rachel Effron Sharma says this is an example of a notice a client received, ordering the client to report to an immigration court at a time when the court was closed.The US Supreme Court ruled in June that notices to appear — the charging documents that immigration authorities issue to send someone to immigration court who’s accused of being in the United States illegally — must specify the time and place of proceedings in order to be valid.Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea said officials have been working to comply with the court’s requirements for notices to appear, but the lapse in funding during the partial government shutdown had delayed those administrative efforts.“All appropriate parties are working together to solve this issue going forward,” she said.In its statement Thursday, the Executive Office for Immigration Review said it had issued policy guidance in December and modified its system so the Department of Homeland Security and its components can directly schedule hearings.The agency said it “does not expect any further recurrence of this type of situation.”
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Yup, and it happened in the “Bay Area” also:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Confusion-erupts-as-dozens-show-up-for-fake-13579045.php
Tatiana Sanchez reports for the SF Chronicle:
One woman pulled her daughter out of school to make it to the courthouse on Montgomery Street. Another caught a ride from Fresno. A teenage girl and her ailing mother waited for hours, clutching documents that summoned the mother to Immigration Court Jan. 31.
But none of them got what they came for and expected: a hearing before a judge.
Dozens of people reported Thursday to hearings previously scheduled by the Department of Homeland Security at the federal San Francisco Immigration Court, only to find the appointments didn’t exist.
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Immigration attorneys described similar scenes in Chicago, Atlanta, Virginia, Miami and Texas, where long lines snaked around courthouses for hours.
Federal officials said Thursday’s problems resulted from the government shutdown delaying the process of rescheduling the hearings.
But attorneys representing immigrants called the court dates fake, and said Immigration and Customs Enforcement is sending immigrants notices to appear — charging documents instructing people accused of being in the country illegally to come to court — with court dates it knows are not real.
“Every city in every jurisdiction is doing this, obviously knowing that there really won’t be court on that date,” said Christable Lee, an immigration attorney in San Francisco. “These immigrants are standing with their kids outside with no direction. They’re afraid to stand outside on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse because there could be other immigration authorities there. It’s a really harrowing situation.”
Attorneys say the new practice stems from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, known as Pereira vs. Sessions that requires notices to appear to include a specific date and time in order to be valid. Previously, immigration authorities could send notices with the date listed as “to be determined.”
A similar situation occurred in several cities nationwide Oct. 31 when dozens of people showed up for court hearings that didn’t exist. Since then, some have reported court dates scheduled on weekends or late at night.
In a prepared statement, ICE denied giving immigrants a fake court date, saying, “Due to the recent partial lapse in government appropriations, the administrative process to resolve this issue was delayed, resulting in an expected overflow of individuals with Notices to Appear listing immigration proceedings on January 31.”
Meanwhile, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees all immigration courts, said it was “unable to proceed” with hearings for some people who “believed they had hearings scheduled” Thursday.
“In some cases, the cases had been rescheduled to another date, but the lapse in appropriations prevented the immigration courts from issuing new hearing notices far enough in advance of the prior hearing date,” the agency said in a statement. “In other cases, EOIR did not receive the Notice to Appear (NTA) in a timely manner. Immigration proceedings do not commence until the Department of Homeland Security has filed an NTA with an immigration court.”
Attorneys with the American Immigration Lawyers Association said they’ve received more than 1,000 reports of immigrants who had notices to appear in court containing fake dates, though they said it’s extremely difficult to track.
Mothers with small children, families and confused couples clutching manila folders crowded the sidewalk in San Francisco Thursday while others filled nearby coffee shops and restaurants after being told to come back a different day. The news was particularly troubling for immigrants who traveled several hours to get to the courthouse, many relying on relatives and friends for rides.
More than a dozen people waiting outside the courthouse declined to be interviewed but told The Chronicle that staff informed them court wasn’t in session Thursday. Some people who showed up in the morning were asked to come back later in the day, though it’s unclear what happened once they returned.
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As I’ve reported before on “Courtside,” contrary to the myths promoted by Trump, DOJ, and DHS, migrants generally appear for court when they get valid notice with real hearing dates and actually have the system explained to them (usually by an attorney); ironically, it’s often EOIR (“the lovable donkey”) that “Fails to Appear” (“FTA”) with an assist from their “partners in crime” over at ICE.
Would a “real court” let the “cops” run roughshod over them and their dockets as EOIR permits ICE to do? Would a “real President” shut down the Immigration Courts over a wall that will have NO, I repeat NO, “immediate impact” on migration while forcing tens of thousands of “ready to try removal cases” to the end of dockets that already stretch out four or more years in some locations?
Part of the problem is the continuing failure since the Clinton Administration of the DOJ to implement the statutory contempt of court authority granted to the Immigration Judges by Congress approximately two decades ago! A few contempt of court orders directed at ICE Agents and the ICE Chief Counsel who are failing to control their so-called “clients,” or perhaps at Secretary Nielsen herself, would bring these absurd, illegal, time-wasting practices that actually hurt real human beings and sow chaos in our justice system to a screeching halt!
That’s why an independent Article I Immigration Court is an essential priority in fixing our immigration system, including the procedures both for granting asylum and other relief promptly, fairly, and in accordance with due process, and issuing removal orders for those who don’t qualify. The current system does neither, for reasons largely beyond the control of the Immigration Judges (although some judges at both the trial and appellate level bear responsibility for failing to carry out in a fair and unbiased manner, consistent with due process, the generous, humanitarian statutes for the granting of asylum and implementing the legal mandates for other forms of protection from persecution and torture. That’s why a transparent, merit-based selection and reappointment system, with provision for public input is essential to an Article I system).
News from the “Journalism Carousel:” Star immigration reporter Priscilla Alvarez has moved to CNN from her prior birth over at The Atlantic. Congrats to Priscilla and to CNN!
PWS
02-01-19