When Court Becomes a Trap
Justice Perverted
“Federal agents take a person into custody after an immigration court hearing in Phoenix on May 21. Ross D. Franklin / AP file”
During my almost 40 years of practicing immigration law in Denver, Seattle, Austin and San Antonio, I spent countless hours in immigration courts. Sometimes I won. Sometimes I lost. But I always felt secure in the knowledge that even if justice was not achieved, at least there was a process to follow, with known rules and procedures. Life outside the courtroom might be chaotic and dangerous, but life inside the courtroom seemed less so.
No more.
Now, Gollum’s puppet, AG Pam Bondi, has converted the immigration courts into traps for the unwary. Law Prof. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández describes this Fresh Hell in his Substack post this morning:
“Three weeks ago, ICE officers began arresting people inside the immigration court moments after immigration judges dismissed the government’s deportation cases. Agents have made similar courthouse arrests in Miami, Seattle, Chicago, and other cities. Targeting people who are appearing for required court dates is likely to discourage other migrants from showing up to court, creating a troubling new front in the Trump administration’s immigration policy.”
“Arresting people at immigration courts might help ICE boost its detention and deportation statistics – at least in the short-run before migrants start changing their behavior to accommodate the agency’s new approach. The administration seems to be hoping that it can use a fast-track deportation option called expedited removal to quickly push people out of the United States. It can’t do that while their legal cases are pending before the immigration courts, so immigration judges, who work for the Justice Department, are doing their part to strip migrants of the process that Congress says they are entitled to.”
“Trump officials are playing with the immigration court system’s legitimacy. By arresting people at courthouses immediately after immigration judges dismiss deportation cases, ICE agents are turning legal proceedings into a weapon. Immigration court cases are necessarily high stress, but they shouldn’t be ambushes.”
Advocates are fighting back. Here is an hour-long video detailing how lawyers are dealing with the presence of ICE agents in the Seattle immigration court.
And it’s getting worse. According to NBC News, immigration judges received a memo on May 30th instructing them to help ICE meet their arrest quotas:
“A recent memo to immigration judges obtained by NBC News provides fresh insight into how the Trump administration is pulling off a new tactic — dismissing pending immigration cases, then immediately moving to arrest the immigrants — that is part of its bid to quickly increase the number of immigrants it is detaining. In the memo, the Justice Department instructs immigration judges, who report to the executive branch and are not part of the independent judiciary, to allow Department of Homeland Security lawyers to make motions to dismiss orally and then move quickly to grant those dismissals, rather than allow immigrants the 10-day response time that had been typical. “Oral Decisions must be completed within the same hearing slot on the day testimony and arguments are concluded,” says the memo, which is dated May 30. It also tells the judges that “[n]o additional documentation or briefing is required” to grant the dismissals. … Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said he believes the new guidance violates [a] provision of the Immigration Nationality Act and is not legal. “The omission of the words ‘of the case’ is deliberate because DHS is trying to avoid having to speak to the individual case. The law requires them to provide particular reasons for their motion, and they are not doing that. The email is the written policy that contradicts the law,” Chen said.”
I’m hoping some brave soul will soon leak the May 30th memo.
When courts become traps, justice is perverted.
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