10/18/2016 Tungol Law Headline News "With the Immigration Court’s Rocket Docket Many Unrepresented Families Quickly Ordered Deported"

At the end of September 2016, according to very timely Immigration Court records obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) show that a total of 38,601 cases on the court’s “rocket docket” involving “adults with children” (AWC) have been decided by immigration judges since July of 2014.

Two years ago the Immigration Courts adopted new docketing practices that gave priority to scheduling of these “AWC” cases involving women and children seeking refuge in this country. This followed the Obama Administration’s action seeking to expedite their removal, and was in response to the sudden influx of these families that began during the summer of 2014. This report examines the speed with which these cases have been closed, particularly for families without attorneys to represent them.

According to the case-by-case court data analyzed by TRAC, in 27,015 out of the 38,601 AWC closed cases – or 70 percent — the family was unrepresented. In the remaining 30 percent or 11,586 cases, the individuals had obtained representation.

Court records also show that it was exceedingly rare for an unrepresented family to file the papers in court needed to even seek asylum or other forms of available relief from deportation. Court records indicate that only 1 in 15 (6.5%) managed to do this without formal representation, despite efforts by a variety of initiatives to try to provide various forms of advice to these families short of formal representation. In contrast, applications for relief were filed by those who were represented in 70 percent of the cases.

Further, cases for the 70 percent who were unrepresented were often quickly disposed of. In fact, forty- three percent (43.4%) of unrepresented AWC cases were ordered deported at the initial master calendar hearing. More on this report is available at http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/441/.

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