NEW YORK (AP) – The average time it takes to resolve a case in US immigration courts is four years.
But that is not the mandate that immigration judge Francisco Prieto has.
The government has told this magistrate in New York to resolve the cases within 300 days. In that time, Prieto hopes to be able to decide the dozens of daily cases that he has of families who recently arrived in the United States through the border and who, after a few days in detention, were released with a notification to appear in court.
The US government has put these newly arrived migrants – who usually come from Latin America – at the top of the case lists of judges like Prieto and ahead of many other migrants who have been in the country for years.
The United States thus believes that other Latin Americans may decide not to emigrate knowing that their cases will be resolved quickly. The country is currently grappling with a backlog of 1.4 million cases in immigration courts.
Almost six months ago, the administration of President Joe Biden established this new docket – called the “dedicated docket” – to deal with newly arrived families, many of them seeking asylum. The program is a modest step to establish order at the border, where US authorities have seen unusually high numbers of migrants. In September, for example, nearly 15,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, camped under a bridge in the Texas border town of Del Rio.
Roughly 35 of the country’s more than 530 immigration judges were assigned to this new expedited case system, according to data from the office that oversees immigration courts. These judges run the new system while simultaneously following through with their regular case lists.
Despite the fact that this “quick” list of cases began recently, the initiative faces the same complaints and challenges as when it was first imposed by former President Barack Obama. Critics of the new program say that migrants will not be treated fairly when authorities rush and expedite their cases, especially if the migrants lack a lawyer.
The initiative’s judges follow the same procedures as in regular cases but give migrants shorter time frames when setting court dates.
Be that as it may, the expedited system represents a tiny part in the enormous volume of cases that reach the immigration courts.
In the days of Obama and former President Donald Trump, the vast majority of cases on the “rocket” list lacked legal representation and many resulted in deportation, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.
Prieto, the New York judge, was assigned more than 1,600 “dedicated docket” cases before the end of August, in addition to those he already had previously, according to figures from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, at the University of Syracuse, which collects and analyzes federal data.
One day last month, the magistrate, who was appointed by Trump, urged migrant families who showed up in his courtroom to call low-cost or free lawyers who appear on a list that the court provides. Some of the migrants told him that no one answers the phone when they call or are told that they cannot be helped.
Prieto asked them to insist and set new dates for them to appear in court.
Some families told him about their problems: the inconvenience of wearing an electronic ankle shackle and other restrictions imposed on them by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, better known as ICE.
Joselyn Margarita Aguilar, a Honduran who appeared with her young daughter in front of the judge, told the magistrate that ICE has told her that she cannot leave her home on Fridays.
“I found a job and now I have lost it because I cannot miss Fridays,” Aguilar told the judge. “I need more time (to find a lawyer) because I don’t have a job and I can’t pay.”
An unusual number of cases could not be heard by Prieto that same day because the court did not receive notifications from the Department of Homeland Security about each of the hearings. Prieto told the families to wait for another court notice in the mail.
The magistrate was connected by phone at one point with a Creole interpreter, in the case of a Haitian family. However, the interpreter could hardly be heard. Prieto asked to be connected with another. The young son of the Haitian couple ran through the courtroom as they waited and began to cry when his fingers got caught in the small revolving door of the court.
Another woman, an Ecuadorian, who arrived with her husband and two children, one of them in a baby carriage, asked Prieto how she could get a work permit. The judge replied that he should discuss this with his lawyer.
As of mid-September, judges from Biden’s “dedicated docket” have heard nearly 16,000 cases, according to the most recent data from the office that handles immigration courts. Of this number, more than 100 have received, until mid-September, a decision by the judges, according to official data. The federal office did not say how many of those were denial or acceptance of asylum.
More than half of all cases in the new program are in New York and Boston, which are destinations for many Ecuadorians, Haitians and Brazilians, according to TRAC’s analysis.
In Boston, nearly one in five city cases through August was assigned to Judge Mario Sturla. The Obama-appointed magistrate had 3,178 cases under the new program, nearly half of his total cases, which is close to 7,000.
One late October almost all of the 20 or so cases before Sturla in the new program were Brazilian, and the vast majority were parents with young children. The judge was patient and kind as families answered their questions through interpreters, while calming children who were crying or moving around too much.
Very few families had lawyers. A 24-year-old woman from Cuenca, Ecuador, who stood in court with two young children said before her hearing that she did not know what was going to happen. The woman, named Angie, asked that her last name not be made public for security reasons. The judge told him to return to court with a lawyer in March.
“I was nervous, scared, worried about what was going to happen,” said Angie, who explained that she fled Ecuador because she said they threatened to force her into prostitution. “Now I feel better. The judge seemed friendly. He was very calm, but we’ll see what happens ”.
Angie said she crossed the border in San Diego in August and is temporarily living with an uncle in Worcester, Massachusetts.
“The truth is that I am afraid that they will return me to my country and I don’t know what would happen to us there,” he said.
The expedited case program is part of President Biden’s “more humane” asylum system, of which few details have been released so far.
Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in May that the program was “an important step for both justice and border security.”
“Families that recently arrived should not languish in backlogs of cases that last for years,” the official said.
Theresa Cardinal Brown of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a research and education center, said she is skeptical unless the program has more resources.
“Immigration judges who have long lists of regular cases are being asked to do this as well,” said Brown, who recommended opening new positions in border courts that could decide cases in six months.
“The capacity (for this new program) has not been expanded at all,” he said.
Neptali Chiluisa, 47, crossed the border in June with a 14-year-old son. His wife and three more children remained in Ecuador. The teenage son, however, returned to Ecuador in August after failing to find a school in New York that would guarantee him a place at the time.
Chiluisa, who rents a room for $ 800 a month in the Bronx, was a boiler installation technician in the military in Ecuador. In New York, he has found employment doing the same in construction zones. The immigrant says that he went to the United States for economic reasons and wonders if he has options to stay only a couple of years legally, working, and then return to Ecuador.
“The (US) government should be more accessible, it should help more for legalization or at least offer a work permit,” Chiluisa said. “There is a need for work here.”
A judge assigned to the new case acceleration program told him in October to return to court this month.
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Marcelo reported from Boston and Spagat from San Diego.
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