Immigration courts in prisons raise issues of due process, public access

TribLIVE, July 31, 2016 - "Raymond Lahoud stood before a judge in a federal immigration court here, arguing why he needed his client's son inside the courtroom.

Marco Davilla, an Ecuadorian immigrant, had been accused by his ex-wife of assaulting his 12-year-old son. The son had told Lahoud it wasn't true, so the energetic, fast-talking immigration attorney from Easton needed the boy to tell the judge the same thing in order to get Davilla bonded out of prison.

The problem for Lahoud and Davilla was that York Immigration Court is located within the walls of York County Prison, which houses immigrant detainees awaiting legal decisions along with regular inmates convicted or awaiting trial for various crimes. The prison's security protocol doesn't allow anyone under the age of 16 inside.

Unconvinced by Davilla's explanation alone, the judge denied him bond. Though the charge was eventually dropped when his ex-wife never appeared in court, Davilla spent another 6 months in jail before he was finally released.

"In what other court system in the world does the warden of the prison decide who can be a witness or not?" said Craig Shagin, a Harrisburg immigration attorney who also has had witnesses denied entry to York Immigration Court. "It's unclear to me even after 20 years of doing this who's really calling the shots. Is it the judge, or the prison?"

There are 58 immigration courts across the United States, including 19 located inside or on the grounds of prisons and detention centers under contract with the federal government through the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division.

Immigration judges solely handle matters like determining whether an undocumented person has committed a deportable offense and whether that individual is a danger to society or a flight risk.

Because immigration courts inside prisons and detention centers are subject to the security protocols of those facilities, some lawyers and immigration judges say that can deny due process for detainees as well as obstruct public access.

Potential witnesses and family can be prohibited from entering to testify because they are underage, as in Davilla's case, or they may be intimidated by the prison facilities from doing so, the critics contend. [More...]..."