Judges thrust into debate over Trump’s immigration policies
LOS ANGELES — Inside a small courtroom, a halfdozen immigrant teens and their families sat anxiously on wooden benches awaiting their immigration court hearing.
An attorney for a nonprofit gave a quick overview in Spanish of U.S. immigration law and what they needed to do: Speak loudly. Ask for clarification if you don’t understand something. Be honest with the judge about what drove you to travel to the United States.
Moments later, Judge Lori Bass peered at the crowd through red-rimmed eyeglasses and in a gentle voice asked the children their names, ages and if they were attending school, which many answered with a resounding “yes” in English. She then turned her attention to the moms, dads and uncles sitting beside them.
“The purpose of these proceedings is to see whether the children can stay in the United States or whether they have to leave the United States,” she said. “This is extremely important, and you really need to understand everything.”
The same scene that played out in a Los Angeles courtroom is encountered each year by thousands of Central American children who travel through Mexico and get caught trying to cross the U.S. border. In most cases, they are sent to live with relatives already in the United States. But the U.S. government still tries to deport them, and many of their fates are decided by the country’s 335 immigration judges.
In recent weeks, the judges have been thrust into the center of the political controversy over President Donald Trump’s immigration policy that separated more than 2,000 immigrant children from their parents.
The administration has announced production quotas for the judges, who are lawyers hired by the Department of Justice. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has narrowed the conditions they can consider for asylum, which could affect many Central American cases. And last week, Trump questioned on Twitter the need for judges for these cases at all by posting: “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”
He also recently lashed out at a proposal in Congress to hire more immigration judges to address a chronic backlog of cases, saying an expansion of the bench would lead to “graft.”