Let's reverse the queue at the southern border among the Central American arrivals and push the most recent of them into immediate hearings, which should lead, routinely, to their rapid return to their home countries.
This is one of a clutch of suggestions I have to try to slow, if not stop, the current influx of families and some unaccompanied children — mostly male teenagers — from Central America.
For reasons that do not make sense to me, there are more procedures available to illegal entrants from places other than Mexico than there are for EWIs from Mexico. Let's accept that for the moment, and manage the process, whatever it is, in such a way as to speed the departure of the newcomers.
Currently there is a long queue of Central Americans, many have been released with a note telling them to show up for a hearing before an immigration judge at some future time; meanwhile the judges are working through substantial backlogs of cases.
My notion would be that as many of the newly-arrived illegals as possible would be given a hearing within 72 to 96 hours after arrival, and that those in the waiting line would simply wait a little longer — while there would be a steady set of return trips back to Central America. (These, of course, should be publicized by our government.)
In this way the aliens would get the hearing that they seem to warrant, but they would, in most cases, serve to carry back to Central America the idea that seeking to enter the United States turned out to be a very bad idea in their case.
The immigration bar would be given a 48-hour window to talk with the aliens, and to help them with their cases. The immigration bar would of course object to high heaven, but in many cases there is so little evidence for an asylum claim, for example, that the real need for time is relatively slight. The real need that is, as opposed to lawyers' attempts to delay justice.
What I am proposing is a way to organize the work of the immigration judges in such a way as to move the illegals swiftly through a genuine judicial procedure. My sense is that this will cost some money, but that the costs could be handled through the $2 billion special appropriation sought by the president. All that money should not be spent on housing the illegals and providing them with social services — some certainly should be available for judicial processing. As I see it, there are three new elements that should be used in this crisis situation.
1. Special Staffing Arrangements. There will be a need for more IJs and supporting staff in the Brownsville-Laredo area; to some extent the extra staff can be transferred from existing immigration courts in the interior, presumably slowing up the already slow systems in those locations — but that is not fatal; the illegals who use these courts are not (unfortunately) going anywhere and they can wait in line a little longer.
What should be done, however, is to borrow a technique the legacy INS used to handle the extra workload of the IRCA legalization program of the 1980s. INS brought a lot of retired INS staff out of retirement on an 18-month basis in which the recycled staff could be paid at civil service rates while continuing to receive their pension benefits. Expensive, yes, but with an extra $2 billion, it can be afforded this year. The short-term personnel could both go to the border and/or fill in for people moved from the interior immigration courts to the border.
As I recall, this was done through special legislation, and that might be needed again.
2. Hearings in Spanish. I have spent many days in the IJ courtrooms in Arlington, Va., and elsewhere just watching the process. Routinely, hearings are held in English and if interpretation is needed it is provided, sometimes by the court and sometimes by the specific alien (usually the latter when the needed language is not Spanish).
Conducting a hearing with a translator while clearly fair to the non-English-speaking alien is time consuming, as everything has to be said twice, first in one language and then the other.
To speed things up -- the point of all these arrangements -- why not enlist (from among the existing court staff) teams of Spanish-speaking immigration judges, federal prosecutors, and courtroom aides? No Central American would object, but there might be complaints from mono-lingual U.S. pro-alien lawyers.
I am not sure what, if anything, the law says about this, but it is an idea that should be tested.
3. Hearings 24 Hours a Day. In order to convey the idea — particularly back in Central America — that we are serious about discouraging illegal immigration, we should run at least some of the hearings 24 hours a day, using three shifts of people to do it. This will inconvenience the people involved, or course, and save only on courtroom rentals, probably a minor item, but it will provide a strong message to the sending countries.
One more thing. The last time I looked, the immigration courts were routinely allocating one full hour to a merits hearing, i.e., one that dealt with the substance of the claim. Sometimes that is needed, and sometimes more time is needed, but I often found that less than an hour was required, and the judge and the courtroom sat idle for half an hour or 20 minutes in each cycle. (In many cases, there is not much to say, and little evidence to offer.)
So these cases should simply be scheduled in order, without the expectation that a full hour would be needed for each one.
I have little hope that any of these innovations will be adopted. The will is not there, but those ideas are available if the administration really wants to try to control the surge.