Sunday Read: Gov't shutdown adds to the woes of asylum seekers and would-be immigrants

THREE WEEKS into the partial government shutdown, the battle over the $5 billion border wall is gumming up an already cumbersome immigration system.
Immigration courts are whittled to a skeleton staff, forcing court dates to be postponed and raising the ire of the judges already burdened by nearly 800,00 pending cases.
"You’re shutting down the immigration court over the issue of immigration," said Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, the judges union. 

"People who are in deportation proceedings but who are not in immigration detention are having their hearings cancelled and rescheduled," said Martha Ruch, Staff Attorney, Immigration Project at Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles. "This is the status quo until the shutdown is lifted."

"However, people who are in ICE detention will still have their court hearings and the detained immigration courts are still operating."

"ICE enforcement and removal operations are also still moving forward," she said, "but for non-detained respondents their cases are being postponed and until they can get rulings in their cases, they will effectively not face deportation. As long as the non-detained hearings remain cancelled, those cases will not receive removal orders from an immigration judge."

For those who have strong asylum claims or green card applications and want to get their lives on solid footing in the United States, the delays can add to their frustration after waiting for years in some cases as they wait for a new court date to reunite with love ones.

However, those with the weaker asylum claims actually benefit from the delays, because they are able to remain in the U.S. in the meantime and hold out hope of qualifying for legal status by some other means down the road. 

In the 2017 fiscal year, immigration courts decided more than 52,000 asylum cases. About 1 in 5 were approved, according to statistics from the courts.

Before the shutdown, immigration courts were already overwhelmed. One asylum seeker, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of persecution in her home country, said the wait has been unbearable since her 2014 court date was twice delayed. It is now set for February.

The shutdown could delay cases months or years, say immigration experts. The courts already have more than 800,000 pending cases, according tot he Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University,

Los Angeles County only has 40 judges in immigration court, and immigration cases have been delayed by at least 50 percent at the local and national level in the last two years prior to the shutdown, according to Syracuse University.

"With the immigration courts, clients who have just arrived in the United States because of political asylum that have ankle monitors and are under supervision order will not be able to hear their cases soon in court," said Gustavo Mora, an immigration lawyer..

For the non-detained court in downtown Los Angeles, the court is closed and the front desk and filing window is closed also, People who need to file applications with the court can only do so by mail.

To check on the status of non-detained hearings, respondents should call the court where they have an immigration hearing and they will receive information about whether the court is still closed, advises Ruch.

“It is just dripping with irony,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “This administration has put a lot of emphasis on speeding up court cases, and the shutdown obviously is just going to cause massive delay.” 

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