Immigration Court Watch

Inconsistencies in immigration court proceedings across the country are well known. From the Seattle Times about a monitoring project:
Tammy Fitting entered the courtroom promptly at 8:30 a.m. Before the immigration judge sat down, she looked around the windowless room inside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.

There wasn’t much to see. It was a standard Monday hearing. Eighteen detainees filled half the seats. Across the aisle, the pews were bare except for Colleen Waterhouse.

Waterhouse, the chairwoman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tacoma and Pierce County, has sat in the same spot in the back corner most Mondays over the past three years. She listens, takes notes and fills out stacks of surveys for the National Lawyers Guild’s court watch program.

The forms ask dozens of questions to ensure the judge and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer are providing due process: Has the judge inquired into the detainees’ mental health? Does the government lawyer provide legal advice? Does someone adequately explain the process to the detainees?

“We always try to make sure we have someone here,” she said. “We make sure to keep an eye on what’s going on.”

The court watch project began about six months after the detention center, a 1,000-bed facility that holds immigrants as they await hearing or deportation, opened in 2004. It was modeled after two similar programs: one in Boston to study the effect of the 9/11 attacks on the cases of Arab immigrants, and one in Chicago to determine if videoconferencing affected the process.

“When people discovered how the master calendars were going to be heard, people were concerned,” said Peggy Herman, a regional vice president for the National Lawyers Guild, referring to the hearings. “Attorneys had to decide whether to appear in Seattle courtroom where the judge sat, or to appear in Tacoma with their client.”

The project has three goals: to educate people about the immigration system, to detect certain trends in the system and, if any of those trends are of particular concern, to publicize and attempt to remedy them. Click here for the rest of the story.

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