Week Nine: This is Different
Everyone gets their day in court.
I sat through dozens of court proceedings when I was a reporter and even more when I worked at a DA's office in New York. Immigration court was completely different.
During my ninth week at GAIN, I visited Atlanta's immigration court. This was my second time there during my internship but this time I was going just to observe removal proceedings. In the past, whenever I walked into court, the grandeur of the building made me feel as if I was walking into somewhere important. The immigration court made me feel like I was walking into a DMV office.
The courtrooms were exceptionally small. That makes sense, I guess, since not many people were inside. All the detainees appear via video from their detention centers. Immigrants in deportation proceedings do not have a right to appointed counsel. Inside the detention center, they are given a list of nonprofits and pro bono attorneys. Working at GAIN, I know too well the long waitlist any immigrant will be placed on once he or she makes that call. Of the immigrants I saw that day, only one had a lawyer representing him in the courtroom.
My supervisor and I sat in the back as we watched a day in one of the toughest immigration courts in the nation. Two to three immigrants would appear on the screen, in their orange suits. One would come to the front and sit in a metal chair while the rest stood in the back as the judge went through routine questions. The only time I've seen multiple defendants in a courtroom together was in large drug trafficking takedowns. Here, however, the defendants weren't tried together so it was especially odd to see them await their outcome together.
The overall theme throughout the questioning was confusion. Detainees would ask a particular question about their case or simply wanted to express their own unique story. The judge, through the Spanish interpreter, would direct them to their lawyer, if they had one, or instruct them to await their hearing. Two of the detainees I saw asked for voluntary departure, meaning they would return to their native country that very day if possible and avoid a removal order on their record. This means waiving the right to appeal and incurring a 10-year ban back to the U.S.
Operating under the executive branch, immigration judges do not have judicial independence and are acting under a set quota of cases to meet. So, I left immigration court conflicted. I'd heard horror stories on some of the immigration judges in Atlanta. With the judge I saw, and knowing the demands currently placed on these judges, I felt he was fair as he could be. He didn't run through his script but moved efficiently through his enormously packed docket. He even gave one immigrant more time to find a lawyer. When the immigration landscape is the grimmest it's ever been, I'll take whatever sliver of hope I can fashion.