Recently, over the course of three days, 336 immigrants from as many as 13 different countries and a variety of ethnic backgrounds, appeared in the immigration court of San Francisco. All faced the prospect of deportation due either to their lack of legal status or for serious criminal convictions.
Immigration judges are aware of the difficulty of keeping biases out of the decision-making process. This can be easier said than done when many claims are often entirely dependent on the testimony of the individual concerned, and linguistic and cultural misunderstandings are also commonplace. As a result, the Justice Department is now making an effort to reduce the impact of bias in the courts and law enforcement. Over 250 federal immigration judges attended a compulsory anti-bias session in August, and an extra 280,000 employees will go through a similar exercise this summer.
Many immigration judges, past and present, have said that the sessions are much needed but unlikely to be enough. Discretion is rarely allowed in immigration court to the extent it is in other areas of the law. Also, immigration judges are forced to handle over 700 cases per year, more than double the number heard by federal court judges.
Today, there are more immigration judges than at any previous time in US history – a total of 277. The backlog of cases has also peaked at more than half a million, with the pressure seeming to make misjudgments inevitable.