Immigration cases slow-going

Short of judges, courts swamped as more deportations loom

An unidentified Guatemalan woman stands inside a dormitory Sept. 10, 2014, in the Artesia Family Residential Center, a federal detention facility for undocumented immigrant mothers and children in Artesia, N.M. The nation’s immigration courts are already overwhelmed, facing a backlog of more than half a million cases.
An unidentified Guatemalan woman stands inside a dormitory Sept. 10, 2014, in the Artesia Family Residential Center, a federal detention facility for undocumented immigrant mothers and children in Artesia, N.M. The nation’s immigration courts are already overwhelmed, facing a backlog of more than half a million cases.

ATLANTA -- Everyone was in place for the hearing in Atlanta immigration court: the Guinean man hoping to stay in the U.S., his attorney, a prosecutor, a translator and the judge. But because of some missing paperwork, it was all for nothing.

When the government attorney said he hadn't received the case file, Judge J. Dan Pelletier rescheduled the proceeding. Everybody would have to return another day.

The sudden delay was one incident of inefficiency witnessed by an Associated Press writer who observed hearings over two days in one of the nation's busiest immigration courts. And that case is one of more than a half-million weighing down court dockets across the country as President Donald Trump steps up enforcement of immigration laws.

Even before Trump became president, the nation's immigration courts were burdened with a record number of pending cases, a shortage of judges and frequent bureaucratic breakdowns. Cases involving immigrants not in custody commonly take two years to resolve and sometimes as many as five.

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The backlog and insufficient resources are problems stretching back at least a decade, said San Francisco immigration Judge Dana Marks, speaking as the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

"It would be a shame if the mistakes of the past continue to be repeated," Marks said, citing previous attempts to ramp up enforcement without providing adequate resources to the courts.

Trump's recent executive orders and subsequent memos from Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly have focused on hiring more enforcement agents to find and detain people in the country illegally, but the administration has been largely silent on beefing up immigration courts.

The system includes 58 courts in 27 states. Their job is to decide whether noncitizens charged with violating immigration laws should be allowed to stay in the U.S. Immigration judges work for the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review, not the judicial branch.

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People appearing in immigration court are generally considered to have the right to an attorney, but the court isn't required to provide one for free as in criminal cases. Rulings can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and board decisions can be appealed to a federal appeals court.

Of 374 authorized immigration judge positions, 301 are filled. Fifty more candidates are in various stages of the hiring process, which typically takes about a year, said Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

The office "constantly evaluates the need to shift its resources," Mattingly said, and is reviewing ways to maximize its efforts on "priority cases."

In all, more than 534,000 cases were pending before immigration courts nationwide in February, according to a recent memo from Kelly.

Advocates say they fear the Trump administration will increase the use of procedures that allow authorities to deport people without using the court system at all.

"Instead of actually trying to make the courts better, they just want to use them less, even though that obviously is deeply problematic from a due-process standpoint," said Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project.

The increased use of detention also could lead people with valid claims for staying in the U.S. to accept deportation, just to avoid extended periods of time in detention, Jadwat said.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which pushes for strict immigration policies, said the greater threat of detention could deter people from coming to the U.S. or encourage some who are here to leave.

Mehlman said he agrees that the system is broken, but said advocacy groups and lawyers who keep filing new motions and appeals are part of the problem.

Symptoms of a broken system were on display when the AP visited the Atlanta court.

On the same day the Guinean man's hearing was delayed, in a courtroom down the hall, detainees filled two rows of benches while lawyers stood crammed into the corner waiting -- some for several hours -- for their clients to be called.

Two Haitian men appeared by video from a Georgia detention center nearly 200 miles away. They were among more than three dozen people on Judge Michael Baird's docket that morning. Neither had received a notice to appear in court, the document that initiates deportation proceedings.

Visibly frustrated, Baird dismissed the cases, noting that the same thing had happened in other cases for months. He also questioned the government attorneys' plan to appeal. Why, he asked, would they do that when it could take four to six months and cost taxpayers money? Why not simply refile the charges?

A few days earlier, Judge Earle Wilson had three cases on his calendar involving people seeking to have their deportation cases thrown out and their status changed to lawful permanent resident. But he told the lawyers and their clients that he had time to hear only one.

As for the other two cases, he set new hearings for Feb. 28, 2018 -- a year and a day later.

A Section on 03/05/2017

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