Secret Dockets And Locked Doors? Federal Judge Keeps Immigration Court Access Fight Alive
A group of human rights volunteers looking to shine a light inside America’s immigration courts won a partial victory in federal court this week, even as a judge tossed out their request for an emergency nationwide fix.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled that volunteer court watchers can move forward with parts of their lawsuit against top federal immigration officials. The observers, led by the group The Advocates for Human Rights, say the government has spent months quietly shutting the public out of deportation and asylum proceedings.
While Contreras refused to micromanage daily courtroom routines, he agreed that cutting off remote access to online hearings and holding surprise out-of-state proceedings without proper notice could violate federal rules that require hearings to be open to the public.
The lawsuit grew out of growing frustrations from volunteers who sit in on immigration cases to make sure people are getting a fair shake. Observers pointed to a long list of roadblocks, from guards locking courtroom doors the second a judge starts talking to staff mumbling case numbers and posting daily schedules at the last minute.
Contreras made clear he wasn’t going to police how clerks hang notices or whether judges run behind schedule, calling those day-to-day court operations outside his power to control. He also said immigration officials are well within their rights to require people to show up in person if a physical courtroom is open and available.
Where the government ran into trouble, though, was what happened when hearings went virtual.
According to court filings, immigration courts increasingly moved proceedings online while locking out public observers. In Minnesota, the group documented a setup they dubbed the “Somali Rocket Docket,” where hundreds of cases involving Somali immigrants were handed off to judges sitting in other states like Georgia and Texas.
Because the judge was hundreds of miles away and the local courtroom was closed, observers were told their only option to watch was to hop on a plane that morning and fly to the judge’s home courtroom. In other instances, remote access links were denied altogether.
“If nobody knows where an immigration hearing will be held until it is too late to make plans to attend, that hearing is not open to the public,” Contreras wrote in his 50-page opinion.
Still, the judge stopped short of issuing an immediate preliminary injunction to stop the practice. The Justice Department’s court division recently issued updated guidance promising that fully virtual hearings are open to as many as 20 online observers. Because the agency said it stopped the blanket lockouts, the judge found there was no immediate emergency requiring a temporary court order while the case plays out.
The ruling trims several individual plaintiffs from the suit, but keeps the core fight alive over how much transparency the government owes the public when immigration hearings go online.