Advocates in New York Scramble as Child Deportation Cases Are Accelerated

New York Times (New York)

By Kirk Semple

August 4, 2014

Advocates in New York Scramble as Child Deportation Cases Are Accelerated 

Immigrant advocacy groups were rushing on Monday to prepare for special new court procedures in New York City next week that will accelerate deportation hearings for newly arrived unaccompanied children from Central America.

The advocates, who learned about the new procedures in the last several days, were trying to develop a strategy to respond to the shift, including recruiting and preparing pro bono lawyers and searching for additional financing to support their efforts.

“This has hit us like a hurricane or a tsunami or whatever you can call it, because we’re already overwhelmed with cases,” said Jojo Annobil, who leads the Immigration Law Unit at the Legal Aid Society. “It will need all hands on deck.”

Under the new procedures, unaccompanied minors and families with children who entered the United States in recent months during a surge of illegal migration from Central America will be moved to the front of the line to go before immigration judges.

These immigrants could be deported in a matter of months rather than years, the usual time frame in the overburdened immigration court system.

Advocates said that under the procedural shift in New York, which is expected to start on Aug. 13, at least one judge at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan will hear what are known as master calendars — initial hearings on cases — several mornings a week.

The advocates, who say they were informally briefed by court administrators in New York late last week, refer to the new procedures as rocket dockets.

The plan is part of the President Obama’s strategy, announced last month, to accelerate cases involving child migrants and parents with children to deter the influx of migrants across the southern border.

In an email on Monday, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s executive office for immigration review, or EOIR, which oversees the immigration courts, said: “These steps include making docket adjustments, re-prioritizing certain case types and refocusing EOIR immigration court resources.”

The administration’s goal is for lone minors to appear before a judge within 21 days after being put into deportation proceedings, said the spokeswoman, Kathryn Mattingly. The realignment is also intended to provide an initial hearing to all parents with children within 28 days, she added.

Justice Department officials did not confirm specifics about the duration of the special juvenile dockets in New York. But they said they had juvenile dockets of varying sizes in 39 courts around the country to help accelerate the processing of cases and meet their goals of shorter waits.

Few courts, however, are handling as many cases as New York: Of all the states, only Texas has received more unaccompanied minors since the beginning of the year, according to figures recently released by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Officials in the Obama administration have insisted that legal standards will not be compromised in the rush to process cases.

But advocates worry that many children may not be able to find competent legal representation — or any representation.

“Immigration court is an incredibly difficult place to navigate for an adult who speaks English, so you can imagine how difficult it’s going to be for a child,” said Camille Mackler, director of legal initiatives at the New York Immigration Coalition.

Last week, a group of legal service providers, including the American Civil Liberties Union, asked a federal court to block deportation proceedings against several children until they had obtained lawyers.

“These children face an imminent threat of being deported, potentially to their death,” Ahilan Arulanantham, a staff lawyer with the A.C.L.U.’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a news release. “To force them to defend themselves against a trained prosecutor, with their lives literally on the line, violates due process and runs counter to everything our country stands for.”

In recent years, immigration courts in New York City have held several special juvenile dockets a month, working closely with a group of legal service providers that offer free legal screening and representation to young defendants.

Those groups say that the normal rhythm of hearings was already overwhelming. The prospect of possibly hundreds of new cases flooding the courts, they say, is dizzying.

“Where will the resources be to actually represent people?” asked Lenni Benson, director of Safe Passage Project, a legal services provider, and one of the groups working in the special juvenile dockets. “I don’t know that without more resources or coordination I can do more than I’m doing. And I know the other organizations are at capacity.”

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com