The Dystopian Underbelly of Immigration Court

This morning I went back to immigration court for the first time in many months.

From the outside, 201 Varick Street looks like any other office building in New York City. Once you enter, it is a dystopian underworld in the guise of brightly lit rooms where people are, “just doing their jobs.”

When you enter the building, private guards bark orders as you go through security. Stand up against the wall, take off your coat, belt, etc. or you’ll be pulled off the line. No one is treated like this in the offices in midtown or Wall Street.

In the last year, the Trump administration has added many more immigration courts around the country. Everything has been squeezed by his deportation machine…faster, faster, crueler, more inhumane.

In the courtroom the Immigration Judge, clerk, DHS Attorney, and a translator joked that they would have any easy day because some of the people who were supposed to have hearings are quarantined for chicken pox.

The women who were having hearings were on VTC, from a detention center in a southern state (video teleconferencing) walk into a sterile room with many chairs. They are all wearing jackets. It must be cold In that room.

Imagine running from danger, making a treacherous journey, then being imprisoned while you ask for asylum.

Imagine seeking justice but you are in detention in one state, the judge is in another state and your attorney (if you are one of the few who has one, none are provided by the court) and translator are calling in from another state.

Imagine being told you have a few weeks until your individual hearing, and you need to pull together all of the paperwork to fight to stay in the USA, and, get it translated into English. This is how you fight for your life while in immigration detention somewhere in the middle of nowhere.