ICE orders immigrants to court, but dates are fake
DALLAS — Santos Monroy, Raymundo Olmedo and more than a dozen other immigrants reported for Dallas court hearings on their deportation cases last Thursday only to be turned away.
They had been ordered to be in court by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But their notices to appear were greeted by court staffers who matterof-factly called them “fake dates.”
Their names weren’t on judges’ dockets. “We’ve got fake dates,” a security guard said as about two dozen immigrants clustered near a court filing window.
The orders to appear are not fake, but ICE apparently never coordinated or cleared the dates with the immigration courts. It’s a phenomenon that appears to be popping up around the nation, with reports of “fake dates” or “dummy dates” in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and San Diego.
Some immigrants have even been given documents ordering them to be in court at midnight, on weekends and on a date that doesn’t exist: Sept. 31.
The result, immigrant advocates say, is more “chaos” in the heavily backlogged immigration court system.
The immigrants turned away in the Dallas court had been detained Aug. 28 at a raid at a trailer factory in Sumner, about 100 miles northeast of Dallas. The raid was described by ICE as one of the largest such operations at a single workplace in a decade. As is often the case, most immigrants were released while awaiting administrative hearings before a judge.
On Thursday, after they showed up without being expected by the courts, a court clerk collected their notices to appear, the charging document usually prepared by ICE, and they were told to fill out another form and were sent away with instructions to call a phone number regularly to eventually learn their real court date.
“It’s a madhouse,” said Dalila Reynoso, a church worker who has been helping workers and their families since the raid.
An ICE spokesman referred questions to the Justice Department’s agency overseeing the courts. A spokeswoman for that agency referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.
ICE spokesman Tim Oberle said the court agency, known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review, “is responsible for setting and resetting appearance dates upon receipt of a notice to appear filed by” ICE and other “components” of Homeland Security.
Neither ICE nor the court agency offered an explanation for the confusion.
Monroy, who worked at the trailer company six years to support his wife and four children, said he has to keep calling for his next court date. Since the raid, he said, he’s had trouble sleeping as he worries about his legal status and how he’ll pay his bills. “I am always thinking of what will happen tomorrow,” said Monroy, who was born in Mexico.
The nation’s immigration courts are overloaded. About 750,000 cases are waiting to be resolved. The courts have not yet moved to a national electronic filing system and lawyers still prepare filings on paper. In July, the court agency began a pilot electronic filing system in San Diego with a goal of going national in 2019.
The fake dates are aggravating problems in the overburdened courts.
Dallas immigration attorney Daniel Stewart and other attorneys say the docket confusion stems from a June 21 Supreme Court case decision involving valid and invalid notices to appear.
In the past, many notices to appear didn’t contain an actual dates or places for immigrants to appear in court. The Supreme Court intervened and ordered the federal government to put real dates and places on the orders.
In the Supreme Court case, a Brazilian immigrant, Wescley Fonseca Pereira, was given a notice to appear without a date and place. The court ruled that a valid notice to appear must include that information.
“Given today’s advanced software capabilities, it is hard to imagine why DHS and immigration courts could not again work together to schedule hearings before sending notices to appear,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.
Stewart said the delays could end up favoring the immigrants.
“It always helps to have enough time to come in with a strong case on your hearing,” Stewart said. That’s especially important because of new policies handed down by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who oversees the civil immigration courts and wants to curtail the use of continuances.
In Los Angeles, immigration attorney Merlyn Hernandez said she has had “fake dates” for some of her clients and has heard about them from attorneys around the nation.
In Chicago, Ashley Huebner, associate director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said she has seen “dozens and dozens” of immigrants with “dummy dates” on their notices to appear. “Some traveled as far as Kentucky, and found out either they were not in court proceedings at all or the date they received to come was completely erroneously,” Huebner said
“The immigration court system is confusing enough on a normal day,” Huebner said. “But to have an individual who probably does not speak English. and receives a document in which DHS has purposely listed a fake date and time is a real different level of confusion and absurdity.”