Unaccompanied children placed first in to go before U.S. immigration judges now

Criticism arises after children are rushed to see immigration judges


By KATE LINTHICUMcontact the reporter

Immigration courts realign overloaded dockets to ensure minors get hearings sooner
Officials say changes send a strong message to Central Americans that the U.S. enforces its immigration laws


Unaccompanied immigrant children apprehended at the border are being placed first in line to go before U.S. immigration judges under a new federal policy, prompting criticism from attorneys who say some immigrants have been given less than 48 hours to appear in court in states far from where they live.

Faced with a surge of immigrants arriving illegally from Central America, immigration courts have begun realigning overloaded dockets to ensure unaccompanied minors get their first hearing before a judge within 21 days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials file a deportation case against them.


FOR THE RECORD
July 29, 12:40 p.m.: In an article in the July 29 Section A about children's immigration court, remarks about why some immigrants have been asked to appear in courts far from the places they are living were misattributed to Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigrant Review. Mattingly referred questions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
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Previously, immigrants waited months or more than a year for their initial hearing with a judge, where they get their first chance to review the charges against them and make the case for why they deserve to stay in the United States.

The shortened timeline, enacted Friday by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, also applies to adults with children who are apprehended at the border.

Officials say the changes will speed up the resolution in many cases while sending a strong message to those in Central America that the United States is serious about enforcing its immigration laws.

Many believe the influx of tens of thousands of immigrant children and families into the United States in recent months has been partly fueled by rumors that children, once they cross the border, will be allowed to stay.

But immigrant advocates say the shortened time frame does not give recently arrived immigrants a fair chance to find a lawyer and build a successful case.

"It is not enough time to prepare a whole case," said Los Angeles attorney Vera Weisz, who said pro bono law firms had been deluged with requests for representation. "In the name of expediency, you're denying people due process."

On Monday, the Southern California Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. sent a letter to an assistant chief immigration judge who helps implement policy, asking for an immediate review of the procedures being used to notify immigrants of their cases.

It cited several cases in which immigrants received notice over the weekend with instructions to appear in immigration court this week.
In one such case, two unaccompanied children from Central America who were released to a sponsor in Virginia received letters Saturday informing them that they had to appear in court in Los Angeles on Monday, according to their attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg.

In a courtroom in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon, where Judge Ashley Tabaddor was supposed to hear the cases of those children and 37 other immigrant minors, not a single child appeared. Tabaddor told the court interpreter who showed up to translate the hearings that she would not be needed.

In each case on the docket, the children had apparently been resettled outside of the Los Angeles area in places such as Louisiana, Georgia and New York. Tabaddor had the power to issue deportation orders because the children didn't show up for their hearings. Instead, one by one, she issued change-of-venue orders, giving the children a chance to appear at a later hearing before a judge closer to their location.

Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman with the Executive Office for Immigrant Review, which operates the nation's immigration courts, said she did not know why the immigrants had been asked to appear in courts far from the places they had settled.

But she speculated that ICE, the agency that initiates deportation proceedings, may have issued notices to appear based on where the immigrants were initially detained, as opposed to where they were currently living.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for ICE, said her agency instituted new procedures to do the opposite. She said beginning last month, ICE's attorneys began waiting until after a child had been placed with a sponsor to file their immigration case in a local court.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...729-story.html

Immigration Courts Speeding Up Hearings For Tens Of Thousands Of Immigrant Children Caught At Border

July 31, 2014 7:00 AM

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Central American immigrants just released from U.S. Border Patrol detention wait at the Greyhound bus station for their continued journey to various U.S. destinations on July 25, 2014 in McAllen, Texas. (credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Immigration courts are speeding up hearings for the tens of thousands of Central American children caught on the U.S. border after criticism that the backlogged system is letting immigrants stay in the country for years while waiting for their cases to be heard.

There are 375,000 cases before the immigration courts and many immigrants wait months or years for a hearing. Instead of bumping children to the back of that long line, the courts are now giving each child an initial court hearing within three weeks, according to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for ImmigrationReview. A spokeswoman for the courts didn’t answer questions about how many children’s hearings had been set under the new plan, or which courts had scheduled additional hearings.

Immigration lawyers have long sought a speedier process to prevent immigrants from having to wait years for an answer on their asylum or green card applications. Now, the concern is the opposite: that the courts are moving so quickly that the children might not have enough time to make a case that they should be allowed to remain in the country legally.

The biggest worry is that children might not receive proper notice of hearings, and could wind up getting a deportation order if they fail to show up, immigration lawyers said. Advocates also say there aren’t enough pro-bono immigration lawyers to go around and that it takes longer to prepare children’s cases because it takes time to earn their trust.

“When the hearing date is three months out, it’s no big deal — it’s plenty of time to get yourself a lawyer. When it’s three weeks, that’s nowhere near enough time,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center in Falls Church, Virginia.

The rollout of the new system started in Los Angeles this week and is also being implemented in otherimmigration courts.

On Wednesday, Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor scanned through the list of 22 children assigned to appear in her courtroom on a special youth docket. Nearly half were there, some wearing ponytails and shorts, sitting alongside parents and other relatives. She told them to come back in September with a lawyer. Others had moved elsewhere in the country, and their cases were transferred.

Four didn’t show up, but Tabaddor didn’t give them deportation orders because they were only sent a notice of the hearing five days earlier.

Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks, who heads the association of immigration judges, said the key is to ensure enough time is allotted to give the cases proper attention.

“It’s just not efficient to go so fast that challenges can be made to the due process,” she said. “It ends up making the cases take longer overall and results in longer appeals, so no one is happy.”

The shift came after more than 57,000 children began arriving on the border last year fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. After they are released from custody, the children are put into deportation proceedings and given a hearing before an immigration judge.

At immigration court in Los Angeles, 16-year-old Elmer Sandoval said he’s worried about what might happen in the proceedings but not more than he was about staying in El Salvador, where gang members threatened to kill him if he didn’t join their ranks. His older brother, who left the country for similar reasons 14 years ago, sent $7,000 for him to come north and the boy arrived in May.

Jorge Sandoval, 34, said the boy would heed the court’s instructions, whether that means he gets a lot, or little time, to present his case.
“Whatever he has to do, he has to do,” the elder Sandoval said.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/...ght-at-border/