Lawyers want immigration courts on hold
Elise Wilkinson has survived cancer, heart failure and lung complications, but the prospect of visiting one of Houston’s crowded immigration facilities amid a growing pandemic puts the 74-year-old attorney in a panic, especially the thought of attending court with one of her elderly clients.
“I have no desire to go in and put myself in harm’s away,” she said, noting the ripple effect exposure to coronavirus would have on her clients, friends and family. “I’ve had other attorneys call me crying … people really are very worried and very upset by the idea that the government wants them to go to work under these circumstances.”
Although many government entities, including courts, have suspended business in the wake of the expanding outbreak, the teeming immigration courts have continued operating in close quarters with limited postponements. This fact has united parties on all sides of the proceedings with a singular goal: to halt in-person hearings.
Immigration judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys on Tuesday called for an immediate closure of the country’s 64 immigration courts amid the public health crisis, which President Donald Trump declared a national emergency. Alternatively, the group is asking the Justice Department to hold proceedings via telephone or video link.
“Everyone who works at court and everyone who has to go to court for a hearing is at risk of getting sick,” said Elizabeth M. Mendoza Macias, the local liaison for the American Immigration Lawyers Association to Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). “Immigrants have to pick between getting sick or getting ordered deported if they don’t go to court to protect their health.”
Mendoza Macias is worried if she goes to court and fulfills her “legal and moral obligation” to her client she could expose her daughter, who has asthma, to the disease. “It’s very terrifying that as an attorney I’m facing this stark choice,” she said.
Judge Ashley Tabaddor, who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, said in a press call that her colleagues had just learned this week about an immigration judge in Denver who reported COVID-19 symptoms. The judge had taken a break from her duties, but her courtroom was still operating, Tabaddor said.
Brandon Roche, a Houston lawyer who has a pregnant wife and a toddler at home, said on Monday he probably crossed paths with more than 100 people along the way to a proceeding inside a tiny shipping container in Brownsville for a client who is detained in Matamoros.
And Fanny Behar-Ostrow, who represents 900 members of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 511, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement trial lawyers, said she was baffled by the Justice Department’s refusal to close or postpone immigration hearings during a global health crisis.
“We oppose an edict that forces respondents to choose between attending court or exposing themselves,” she said, adding that it made no sense to press on under the conditions. “We don’t understand their logic or policy concern.”
The ICE lawyers’ group, the immigration lawyers association and the judges association joined forces to demand the emergency closure of the courts in keeping with public health protocols regarding the highly contagious virus.
The courts, according to the organizations’ statement, “need immediate, sensible, rational, scientifically-based health and safety solutions that protect (immigration judges), their staff, the contract interpreters, the private bar, the respondents and their witnesses, the security staff, and so many of the other people who make each hearing possible.”
Through April 10, the EOIR, which oversees immigration courts for the Justice Department, has postponed all initial appearances where dozens of non-detained immigrants appear before a judge at the same time. However, all other hearings have continued unabated with the exception of Seattle, which has shuttered all proceedings due to the extent of that area’s outbreak.
Detained immigrants elsewhere in the country still must make master calendar appearances, the equivalent of arraignments, where dozens of people are often jammed cheek-to-jowl inside a small room. Individual hearings about asylum, naturalization, removal and detention are also moving forward as scheduled.
Rob Barnes, a spokesperson for the EOIR, did not indicate there’d been any movement from his office, but said his staff “continues to evaluate the information available from public health officials to inform the decisions regarding the operational status of each immigration court.” He said that employees and stakeholders were being urged to follow CDC guidance on hygiene practices.
The united group opposing business as usual said in its statement that “these are extraordinary times” and the Justice Department’s response to the outbreak and potential spread of the disease was “insufficient and not premised on transparent scientific information.”
Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor of global health at Harvard, said at the group’s press briefing that the danger at these courts is that it is impossible to determine which people at a hearing may be ill with the coronavirus and infection can happen when people are asymptomatic.
“I believe if we’re going to have a shot at dealing with the outbreak, we should have no gatherings of five or more,” said Jha, who directs Harvard’s Global Health Institute.
“We really are in the middle of the most important public health crisis of the last century. During these very unprecedented times, I believe we need to make decisions that will have substantial consequences,” he said.