US Immigration Judges Told to Slash Time Given to People Awaiting Visas or Green Cards Before Being Deported

Immigration judges across the United States have been instructed to deny some of the most vulnerable people appearing in court the time needed for their visas or green cards to arrive – putting them at imminent risk of being thrown out of the country as the Trump administration continues to intensify its mass deportation campaign, the Guardian has learned.

Among the immigrants affected are abused and abandoned children and survivors of violent crime, according to the US government’s own training materials, which were shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Judges also appeared to be discouraged, under a hardline interpretation of existing policy guidance and laws, from giving people more than 10 days to find an attorney before proceeding with a case, a deadline that made critics balk.

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According to the source, hundreds of immigration judges attended a mandatory presentation in recent days about “continuances” – a legal tool which has historically been used to give immigrants more time to find lawyers, build their cases or wait for approval of their applications for documents at another federal immigration agency.

The virtual training session was led by a veteran immigration judge, Keith Hunsucker of the board of immigration appeals, the immigration courts’ appellate branch. He denied over 80% of asylum cases for much of the time that he was on the bench in immigration court before moving on to other roles.

The visual presentation was called “Motions to Continue: Efficiently Advancing Cases to Completion”, according to images of the slides used that were shared with the Guardian. The training’s thrust was to tightly restrict continuances in favor of faster adjudications, even when granting more time would allow people to receive legal protections to remain in the US, such as a visa or green card they have qualified for or had approved and are simply awaiting. A deportation slams shut some of those pathways and yet is a much more likely outcome when continuances are denied and rulings are made abruptly.

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