Immigration courts face many problems
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 come back another day.
The sudden delay was just one example of the 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 half a 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.
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.
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. Fif- ty more candidates are in various stages of the hiring process, which typically takes about a year, said Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman 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 worry 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 could also lead immigrants 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.
The Georgia Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday from a Floyd County man sentenced to life without parole for a 2013 murder that his attorney was ineffective at his trial.
Jamarrcus Rashad Sullivan was sentenced to life without parole plus 45 years for the June 1, 2013, fatal shooting of 39-year-old Kevin Daniel.
Sullivan along with Antonio Devion Jones and Christopher Rayshun Smith plotted and then robbed Kevin Daniel at his Wheeler Street home.
Once inside the home a struggle broke out and Daniel was shot as the three men fled. He died later from his wounds.
Sullivan argues his trial attorney violated his constitutional rights by not objecting to evidence that made it seem as if he planned to flee after the crime as well as showing