Trump ‘deportation machine’ keeps growing amid Covid-19

Bloomberg

As President Donald Trump prepares to pause immigration into the US, the court system that handles the removal of immigrants is projected to issue nearly 60% more deportation orders than last year.
With the rest of the US legal system grinding to a near halt amid the pandemic, at the nation’s 69 federal immigration courts cleaning crews clad in hazmat suits are regularly used to make sure in-person hearings can continue. The courts are moving at speed to reduce a massive backlog of cases despite outdated technology and criticism from advocacy groups and a union representing most of the nation’s 460 immigration judges, who say the pace is putting people at risk of infection.
“The deportation machine has not stopped,” said Florida immigration lawyer Ira Kurzban. “It’s somewhat outrageous given the current circumstances.”
While the number of people deported from the US fell in March, one research group predicts that the total number of deportation orders will rise for the 2020 fiscal year, despite the
pandemic. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University group that tracks government enforcement actions, estimates there will be 340,500 deportation orders in the year ending on September 30, 2020, up from 215,535 for the prior year.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, declined to comment on the projection,
saying it doesn’t certify third-party statistics.
The National Association of Immigration Judges says the continued operation of the courts is unsafe and has called for them to be closed. The Trump administration in 2018 set a quota for each immigration judge to close 700 cases a year, a requirement that remains in force during the pandemic, said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the union.
US immigration judges are “being forced into this Hobbesian choice of risking their health and having to keep their jobs,” said Tabaddor. She cites a colleague who is trying to meet his quota while minimising his health risk as a throat cancer survivor.
Along with the judges, 1,200 support staff work in the nation’s immigration courts. Those courts are taking precautionary steps similar to those elsewhere in the federal system “to reduce the likelihood of exposure to Covid-19,” including holding hearings via phone or video conference whenever possible, according to Kathryn Mattingly, a Justice Department spokeswoman. Hearings involving people not in custody have also been suspended until May 15.
But judges and lawyers said it is harder for the immigration courts to operate remotely than other federal courts. While electronic document filing is routine in other federal courts, the immigration courts have struggled to introduce it, leaving most documents in paper form. Though some filings are now accepted by email, the many court employees without laptops need to come into the office to access them.
“The immigration courts are probably 20 years behind federal courts in terms of technology,” said Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge. Moreover, some immigration courts have rules where opting for a phone hearing means giving up the right to object to documents submitted by ICE, he said.