Special for Infobae’s The New York Times.
NEW YORK – It was just dawn, but one morning this fall, people were already crowding around an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employee stationed outside a Manhattan courthouse.
He told each of them the same thing: the seat of the ICE office had reached its maximum capacity. There were already five hundred people inside.
“Get the email and go home,” he asked.
Some took a photo of a poster showing the email addresses of the federal immigration agency. Others went to the entrance of an immigration court around the corner, where they were denied entry. Dozens were nearby holding orders that said they would have to show up in person that day at a building that was not allowed to enter.
“They are playing with us,” said Severino Macias, from Brooklyn, who accompanied his daughter-in-law, who arrived in New York from Ecuador in September. “What is happening?”.
The courtroom scene, where migrants were trying to keep check-in appointments with ICE, captured the chaos lawyers and organizations helping migrants have warned about since thousands of new migrants have started arriving in the city this year: the strained immigration system is becoming increasingly blocked, a problem that is set to worsen as migrants face deadlines to apply for asylum next year.
Although a sharp change in the federal government’s immigration policy has slowed the daily arrival of immigrants, more than 21,000 people are already in New York City and many are hoping to gain legal status through the asylum process. They will join a queue that already includes approximately 180,000 cases pending in New York State immigration courts, handled by 88 judges.
For months, immigration agencies have been claiming that the system is collapsing. Immigration documents appear to be sent to random addresses. Some newcomers have been given initial hearing dates well beyond the asylum application deadline. Lawyers say the courts have lost files and dismissed people with scheduled hearings who showed up. And many migrants will have to navigate the system alone, due to the lack of immigration lawyers and defenders.
Jodi Ziesemer, director of the immigrant protection unit at the New York Legal Assistance Group, said the “chaos and confusion” in the immigration system is worse than normal.
“This is at the expense of people’s rights and the ability to seek legal protection in the United States,” he said.
Migrants seeking asylum must apply within one year. As migrants arriving this summer approach that deadline, the immigration justice system will be even more overwhelmed, said Maryann Tharappel, who heads migrant services and reception centers at the archdiocese’s Catholic Charities. from New York. It can already take up to five years for asylum cases to be heard at the hearing.
One likely result is that many newcomers, frustrated with waiting for a work permit and unable to survive here without work, seek work in the city’s informal economy, joining the pre-existing pool of some 500,000 undocumented workers in the city.
The city already has one of the largest immigration court arrears in the country, after Miami in fiscal year 2022. Nationally, about 1.7 million cases were opened last fiscal year (ended June). in immigration courts.
New migrants represent a growing trend in migration to the United States, with more newcomers seeking asylum after crossing the border, hoping to eventually gain permanent legal status. The chances of them succeeding are slim. Immigration judges granted asylum in about 14% of cases examined during the last fiscal year.
Despite this, asylum seekers can remain in the country pending a decision on their case. Customs and border protection agents release them as this happens and they should report regularly to the immigration authorities. Some are tracked through the ICE Alternatives to Detention program, which uses various forms of tracking, including a location tracker, a face-recognition phone app, and phones.
Last year, in an effort to reduce the amount of time families spend in immigration detention centers, the Border Patrol began releasing people who were asked to report to local ICE offices. Most migrants meet this requirement in a timely manner. A September report by a government surveillance group found that ICE had trouble locating about a quarter of the families who had applied in early March.
Not going to the appointment of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service is usually not a problem, according to Isejn Marku, a private immigration attorney in New York. ICE agents cannot see everyone who has scheduled the same day, so they are unlikely to consider a missed appointment as a missed appointment.
The local ICE office did not answer questions about how many appointments are scheduled per day at its Manhattan office, because people with appointments cannot enter the building and if they do not show up on an appointment it could affect a case person.
When migrants arrive without a final destination address, immigration advocacy groups say that in some cases, agents send their documents to non-profit organizations and other organizations in cities where migrants say they want to settle . Tharappel commented that his organization has received more than 1,500 notifications from migrants with whom he has never been in contact.
Border patrol officers must go to great lengths to confirm that the addresses provided by the migrants are valid, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said. People who do not have a sponsor’s address can submit the address of a non-governmental organization. It also provides instructions on how to change the address. At a minimum, agents include a city and state in their documents.
An immigration courts spokesperson explained that the agency was unaware of people who had been turned away from a scheduled court hearing and is working with the Homeland Security Department to address misdirection issues on notices. . Judges are aware of problems when judging cases, she added.
Marku commented that never in his 27-year career as an immigration attorney had he seen the city’s immigration courts overwhelmed as they are now.
“They don’t have enough judges, they don’t have enough lawyers, they don’t have the support staff to do the job,” commented the lawyer.
Despite this, Marku (who works primarily with clients from the Balkans and some from Ecuador and Peru) says the courts and staff of ICE have done better than expected to keep up with the volume of cases.
“They go ahead and you have to give them the credit they deserve,” he said.
The state legislature increased funding for immigration services in the budget earlier this year. Governor Kathy Hochul has created an institute that will focus on creating public policy solutions to help migrants. In addition, a bill proposed by state legislators, still pending approval, would guarantee migrants legal representation in the immigration court.
However, in New York City, “there aren’t enough lawyers,” Ziesemer said.
