No deportations without due process — the Dedicated Docket must go

All people in the United States have fundamental due process rights. This rings all the more true when the stakes are life or death.

In fast-track proceedings across the country, the Biden administration has been quietly ordering the deportation of thousands of asylum seekers, most of whom never get their day in court.

The administration has implemented the Dedicated Docket, as these fast-track proceedings are known, in 11 cities to make immigration court hearings more “efficient.” But for far too many, “efficiency” has meant orders of deportation, without notice, to countries where their lives are in danger.

Take, for example, the case of Luis, his pregnant wife and toddler son. They were prepared to appear in Boston immigration court on their assigned date, only to discover later through an immigration lawyer that the administration had fast-tracked their case, moving it to the Dedicated Docket and assigning them an earlier date. By then it was too late — a judge had already ordered Luis’s family removed when they did not appear at the new hearing. Luis and his family, like countless other asylum seekers on the docket, never received notice of the change.

On the other side of the country, in Los Angeles, William and his son were at a mandatory check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where ICE gave them a notice with information about their next immigration court hearing. On the assigned date, William and his son arrived at the ICE office and were told to wait in the lobby, even though the courtroom was on the fourth floor of the same building. After seven hours, an ICE officer finally came to inform them that they had missed their court hearing, and that the judge had ordered them removed for failing to appear.

Luis’s and William’s experiences are alarmingly common. As a recent report by the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program revealed, most immigrants on the Boston Dedicated Docket were ordered removed, and nearly three-quarters were ordered removed in absentia, without ever having their day in court. Children accounted for approximately 40 percent of those in absentia orders. A report analyzing the Los Angeles Dedicated Docket last year found similarly high rates of in absentia removal orders.

Why does this happen? For starters, many people never receive notice of their hearings. Research indicates that when immigrants do know about their hearings, they show up. Moreover, with the immigration court system rife with confusion, many on the Dedicated Docket end up ordered deported in absentia despite their best efforts to appear in court. In Los Angeles and New York, for example, asylum seekers have been ordered removed for failing to appear while waiting in hours-long lines to enter the courthouse.

Reversing such in absentia removal orders is impossible for many, especially those without an attorney. In Boston, only about 30 percent of in absentia removals were even challenged. Luis is one of the fortunate few who, with the help of an attorney, was able to vacate the removal order.

But the majority of those on the Dedicated Docket have no legal representation — in Miami, representation rates on the Dedicated Docket are as low as 22 percent; in Boston, it’s less than 51 percent, as compared to over 87 percent for asylum seekers in Boston generally. Notably, every single person who won asylum on the Boston Dedicated Docket had legal representation.

Without access to counsel, the vast majority of those on the Dedicated Docket are unable to even apply for asylum in the first place. These disparities raise serious due process concerns, particularly for those who’ve never had a chance to defend themselves against deportation in immigration court.

The stakes are too high to ignore. Deporting asylum seekers without a hearing has dire consequences: people are fast-tracked back to countries where they frequently face torture or death. Yet, asylum seekers are being denied relief at disproportionately high rates on the Dedicated Docket. In Boston, only 4 percent of individuals assigned to the Dedicated Docket were granted asylum as of August 2022.

Advocates around the country have repeatedly brought these miscarriages of justice to the attention of the Biden administration — to no avail.

The administration’s actions violate the right to seek asylum in the United States, as well as asylum seekers’ statutory and due process rights to a hearing before an immigration judge. The administration must terminate the Dedicated Docket. If the administration refuses to stop fast-tracking deportations, it should, at a minimum, afford asylum seekers a second chance to appear before a judge, especially for those who receive no notice of their hearings or comply with other mandatory requirements, like ICE check-ins.

All people in the United States have fundamental due process rights. This rings all the more true when the stakes are life or death.

Sabrineh Ardalan is the director of the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program and a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School.

Tiffany Lieu is a clinical instructor at the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program.