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ImmigrationProf Blog
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SCOTUS Says Government Must Give Notice of Time and Place of Immigration Court Hearings, So Government Gives Times/Places for Nonexistent Hearings. Again.

By immigrationprof

On Thursday, January 31, thousands of people across the country took time off of work, and in some cases drove for hours and hired attorneys for immigration court hearings that didn’t exist.  The government’s decision to notice people for nonexistent court date arises out of the Supreme Court case Pereira v. Sessions, which held that notices to appear in immigration court that failed to specify the time and place of the hearing were insufficient.  (Prior to Pereira, DHS regularly issued immigrants notices to appear in immigration court that indicated that the actual time of the hearing was “TBD.”)  The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times reported on last week’s debacle.  

This isn’t the first time that notices for nonexistent hearings have been issued, with similar incidents taking place in September and October.  DHS told the media it doesn’t plan to continue issuing notices for hearings that don’t exist in the future. Still, this incident is a small but useful illustration of the way that immigration court functions.  For the noncitizens with hearing dates, the consequences of not appearing would be an in absentia removal order. For many people, the prospect of appearing in court imposes high levels of stress and anxiety. For some , immigration courts may be hours away from home, compounding the financial costs of missed work, additional child care and possible legal fees. Some of this could have been mitigated, even after the government’s issuance of the notices to appear, with a series of phone calls, public announcements or updates to the EOIR hotline.  But what really stands out to me is the glaring absence of common courtesy that often accompanies interaction with the immigration courts.  (And yet in the larger scheme of things, this is a minor inconvenience compared to the regular deprivations of liberty and fairness that occur in the immigration enforcement system.)

-JKoh