The National Association of Immigration Judges sent a letter today regarding coronavirus to James McHenry, the Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that oversees the nation’s immigration courts. The organization is concerned that EOIR has been ignoring its requests to take immediate steps to protect court employees, immigrants and lawyers. And the union said that the previous requests are now inadequate. They need to now suspend all hearings for people not currently in immigration detention.
The letter issued this ominous picture of the situation:
As you know, our non-detained master calendar dockets typically bring 50 or more respondents into each courtroom; on busy days, some of our Immigration Courts schedule 13 or more master calendar dockets per day, resulting in hundreds of respondents from all over the world visiting our courtrooms, waiting areas, and other public areas. Many of the respondents have recently traveled internationally or live in close contact with those who have. In addition, many master calendar dockets include family groups with small children, and, of course, many respondents are accompanied by friends, relatives, and attorneys. These master calendar dockets bring hundreds of people into close and extended contact with each other and with the Immigration Judges, interpreters, and court staff. This is exactly the type of situation the White House, CDC and other public health authorities urge us to avoid, and we trust that you will agree that it is untenable and irresponsible in light of the current spread of COVID-19 infections across the country.
The judges have proposed the following solution:
Therefore, we call on you to suspend all non-detained master calendar dockets for the duration of this public health crisis. Immigration Judges can use cancelled master calendar time to hear individual cases (including addressing the backlog of hundreds of thousands of long-pending cases scheduled for individual hearing) that do not involve unwarranted exposure to large numbers of people in our space-limited facilities.
Of course, this would still potentially be problematic if indeed social isolation is an utmost nationality priority and it begs the question of why not simply suspend all live hearings.