Immigration Court: there is no finish line
This morning, I was back at Ft. Snelling, observing the workings of the local Federal Immigration Court.
Charles Dickens famously wrote in his 1853 novel Bleak House about the fictional court case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, based on a real probate case in England (Jennens v. Jennens). The real-life Jennens case began in 1798 and ran for 117 years until its abandonment in 1915. The case saw all or parts of three centuries. We mortals should be so lucky.
This morning’s hearing in Courtroom 1 involved a 39-year-old East African woman who is the subject of a deportation proceeding. Today’s hearing was conducted entirely in English and lasted about 30 minutes.
The judge was present in the courtroom as was the woman’s private attorney. Attending via video conference was a lawyer from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the woman herself, appearing from her current home in Twin Falls, Idaho.
DHS is seeking to deport her to Eritrea for reasons not discussed in open court this morning. The woman saying, “I got in trouble,” was the closest we got to a backstory. The DHS lawyer mentioned that this case has been ongoing for five years already.
However, the question of her deportation to Eritrea was not on today’s docket. Instead, the court was taking up the much narrower issue of her competency to participate in these proceedings.
It was mentioned that the woman’s parents were from Eritrea. She claims to have been born in neighboring Sudan and says she has never visited Eritrea. It should be noted that the nation of Eritrea did not exist at the time of her birth (wherever that may have occurred) as it did not gain its independence from Ethiopia until the early 1990s.
To combat the deportation effort, the woman’s lawyer has filed an asylum claim on her behalf, on form I-589. The basis of her current claim was not specified, but here are the bases for asylum claims as listed on the form:
The woman’s lawyer said that he would revise her asylum application to note her newly-discovered bisexual orientation. In this context, newly-discovered refers to literally yesterday, Tuesday, September 3, 2024. I’m not kidding.
No details were provided in open court, but the woman’s lawyer claims she is not competent to participate, based on “significant mental health” and “cognitive functioning problems.”
Other than a brief tearful moment, her direct questioning by the judge revealed no obvious cognitive or mental health issues to this observer.
Apparently, her free Medicaid insurance has been discontinued at some point for some reason.
Her lawyer averred that she would be eligible to apply for employer-provided health-insurance benefits beginning in November (she works at a potato processing plant]. She would, presumably, be eligible to receive these benefits at some point after that. She would seek and receive mental health services. These services would include the prescription of medication. She would take this medication as prescribed and would, at some point, be better able to participate in her deportation proceedings.
Based on that series of unsupported assertions, her attorney requested a continuance (delay) of this morning’s competency hearing until a future date.
The DHS lawyer objected to the further delay, but was overruled. The judge will set a date in 2025 to resume the competency hearing.
If I heard correctly, the DHS lawyer expressed concern about the calendar, regarding when we may eventually reach a deportation hearing proper. A two-year scheduling backlog was mentioned.
So, a deportation case already old enough for kindergarten, is guaranteed to see a sixth year, if not a seventh.
Officially, the burden of proof in these cases lies with (would-be) immigrant. But, as I witnessed this morning, in practicality, the immigrant is given every benefit of the doubt, real or imagined.
To put these dates in context, I turn to the Immigration Court data maintained by researchers based at Syracuse University.
I mentioned last week that the case backlog at Ft. Snelling stands at more than 42,000 (all case types). That’s approaching 1 percent of Minnesota’s entire population, It’s greater than the entire population of Cottage Grove and is more than the capacity of the Twins’ Target Field stadium.
The current backlog of just asylum cases stands at nearly 13,000, as of the end of 2023. The backlog has grown every year since 2014.
In the past twelve months, a total of 716 asylum cases have reached a final decision in Ft. Snelling. That works out to an average of 60 per month, or about 3 for each business day.
On that pace, it will take nearly 18 years for the Ft. Snelling asylum-case backlog to clear. And that’s assuming no new cases are added. Even though most asylum claims are eventually denied, asylum seekers get years, even decades, of time in America before a decision is reached.
The whole experience reminded me of T.S. Elliot’s words:
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion
The system simply does not work. Something must change.