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Thursday 19 december 2019

Lawsuit says immigration courts are now deportation machines

Continued from Front have denied more than 85 Law Lab.
percent of applications for The U.S. Department of Jus-
Yet, in the immigration asylum, with El Paso having tice did not immediately
courts, the tradition of ju- the highest denial rate at respond to a request for
dicial independence has 96.6%. comment on the lawsuit,
been turned upside down,” “We’ve come to call the which was filed in Portland,
the lawsuit against Presi- current situation a depor- Oregon.
dent Donald Trump and At- tation machine, and it re- “The immigration court sys-
torney General William Barr ally is because it is virtually tem is actually the central
says. impossible, particularly in knot in the entire immigra-
Melissa Crow, senior su- some jurisdictions around tion policy debate,” Man-
pervising attorney at the the country, to effectively ning said, adding that the
Southern Poverty Law Cen- represent individuals in im- Trump administration uses
ter and a lead attorney in migration court proceed- the immigration courts’ In this Sept. 17, 2019, file photo, migrants who are applying
the case, said that some ings,” Crow told The As- dysfunctionality to justify in- for asylum in the United States go through a processing area
parts of the United States sociated Press in a joint creased detention and “to- at a new tent courtroom at the Migration Protection Protocols
have become “asylum- telephone interview with tally inhumane practices” Immigration Hearing Facility in Laredo, Texas.
free zones” because im- Stephen Manning, execu- like forcing asylum seekers Associated Press
migration courts in 23 cities tive director of Innovation from Central America to re-
main in Mexico or be flown through cases faster is a
to other countries. dashboard on their com-
“I swore to uphold the Con- puter that shows, in real
stitution at my investiture. time, progress in achiev-
When the administration ing the attorney general’s
made it impossible to con- performance metrics. Me-
tinue to do so, I resigned,” ters showing red, yellow
Shugall said Wednesday or green indicate whether
at a telephone news con- their cases are proceeding
ference organized by the fast enough.
plaintiffs. The judge who “It was very stressful,”
swore her in also resigned. Shugall said. She eventu-
To receive a satisfactory ally stopped opening the
performance rating, immi- feature.
gration judges must decide Some cases, on the other
approximately three cases hand, are left dangling for
per day and issue decisions as many as five years, mak-
on the merits of a case no ing it harder for attorneys
more than 10 days after the to find witnesses and evi-
final hearing , Crow said. dence after all that time,
In some cases, judges Manning said.
would need to dig into the Crow said this lawsuit has
law and understand com- the potential to provide
plicated facts but they in- fairness to asylum seekers
stead have an incentive and others who have been
to deny a case, which is the target the Trump ad-
faster than granting asy- ministration’s rhetoric and
lum, to meet their perfor- policies.
mance goals, Crow said. The law groups, which
Not meeting goals under a have represented immi-
metrics policy instituted by grants, asked the federal
the Trump administration court to require the attor-
can result in a judge being ney general to correct the
fired, the lawsuit says. dysfunction of the immigra-
Pushing the judges to go tion court system. q