The ongoing partial US government shutdown is causing a further strain on US immigration courts as well as creating potential hardships for US Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and other front-line Department of Homeland Security who are considered “essential” workers and must continue to work without pay during the shutdown. Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, says that the federal employees including CBP officers and agriculture inspectors stationed at border crossings and airports are “key to our nation’s security and economic success, and they do not deserve to be treated this way.” CBP agents are taking into custody more than 2,000 migrants per day on average and, with nowhere to detain them, the governments has been releasing hundreds onto the streets in El Paso, Texas, Yuma, Arizona, and other border cities.
Read moreProPublica: “A Defendant Shows Up in Immigration Court by Himself. He’s 6.”
Wilder Hilario Maldonado Cabrera, a Salvadoran boy, was the youngest defendant on the juvenile docket in immigration court in San Antonio, Texas shortly before Thanksgiving this year. Wilder, six years old, was one of the last children affected by the administration’s zero-tolerance policy. He was separated from his father on June 6 after they crossed the US/Mexico border to seek asylum. Wilder’s father was detained separately, while Wilder’s mother remained in El Salvador.
Read moreJohn Oliver on America's Immigration Courts
HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” aired a comedic but insightful segment on the injustices and absurdities of US immigration courts. The segment covers various topics including the burdensome task that immigrants face of representing themselves in immigration court if they cannot afford a lawyer, the years-long case backlog, and what happens to asylum applicants who don't win their case. He takes especially sharp aim at the assertion that child immigrants can understand immigration law well enough to effectively represent themselves in court without a lawyer. To this end, he features clips from attorney Amy Maldonado's interviews of toddlers responding to basic biographical and immigration-related questions. To one inquiry about designating a country of removal, Lilah, who is about three or four years old, says: pizza!