Obama Administration Is Quietly Delaying Thousands of Deportation Cases

Lets keep some more criminals SPC Britanny *Winnie* Balthaser and if they are in jail,, lets release them! That is the mantra of this administration.

I wish I could say I am shocked. Unfortunately I can not.

This is a big problem because our system (rightly) gives all parties in any court proceeding, including administrative courts which the EOIR (Executive Office for Immigration Review) and its immigration courts are.

Unlike in criminal courts, there is no right to FREE counsel, and this is the problem, especially in cases involving the very young or the very traumatized who often cannot represent themselves. One immigration judge recently made the rather stupid arguments (against providing government attorneys for minors) that he could teach a 3-year-old enough about immigration law to competently represent himself or herself, which is absolutely NOT possible.

The solution is simply to hire more judges, and in the case of minors and those not competent to represent themselves (use the same standards of competence as criminal courts do) a government attorney should be provided, most likely through the USCIS Asylum Office (the prosecutors are part of ICE) or create indigent defense panels much like criminal courts do for cases that the public defender cannot accept (due to number or conflicts of interest). Those "Alternate Public Defenders" as most counties call them, are paid by the county, or in federal indigent defense panels are paid by the court.

The current system is to just ask private attorneys to take the cases pro-bono, which is a problem. I am a private attorney and I currently have 146 active deportation defense cases, of which roughly 20 are pro-bono or low-bono (heavily discounted). As a solo attorney with a small staff, I am maxed-out on how many cases I can manage at a given time. Previously, a deportation case would make its way through the courts in about two years, but recently cases are taking five years on average, with a few of my cases from 2009 still pending after 7 years. If it takes 7 years for a pro-bono case to drop off, it also takes seven years before I can take a new pro-bono case to fill its slot as without enough paying cases, I can't pay my staff (and myself) and then would be unable to represent anybody.

This is a very common problem that all immigration lawyers are facing, and it affects the prosecution side as well. While ICE prosecutors (they are called "Trial Attorneys or TAs") don't depend on regular income from new cases to keep their offices open or feed their families, they too can only manage a certain caseload at a time. ICE TAs that I speak to tell me that they had caseloads of approximately 120 cases three years ago, and are now averaging approximately 250. Those ICE TAs, by the way, don't usually have paralegals to help them with their research and writing and unlike private attorneys who typically can schedule court days, consultation days, client meeting days and research (admin) days, ICE TAs are in court EVERY SINGLE DAY, and often have to do their writing after hours or squeezed into whatever few breaks they get. Judges have it even worse as some cases are considered priority or have legal time-limits, which causes other cases, even very, VERY old ones, to get bumped and pushed still further back.

Simple right-wing slogans like "Deport them all", besides being just plain barbaric, are also illegal based on the fifth and sixth amendments. Left-wing pleas to give everyone an attorney and just automatically let minors stay are just too expensive and are also illegal. What is needed is increased funding to hire more judges, more ICE TAs and to either provide public or pay for private representation of minors and those incompetent to represent themselves, which of course the "cut-everything" GOP house will never authorize.