Report: Vast Majority of Asylum-Seeking Families in S.F. Immigration Court Attend All Hearings

A new analysis of immigration court records show that the overwhelming majority -- close to 98 percent -- of asylum-seeking families in San Francisco’s immigration court attended every hearing, the highest rate in the country.

For those with legal representation, almost 100 percent made it to court for every hearing.

The San Francisco numbers are in keeping with data from across the country, which shows that the vast majority of families attended all their immigration court hearings, from last September through May.

But they contradict a recent assertion by the acting Homeland Security secretary, who told the U.S. Senate earlier this month that 90 percent of people do not show up for their asylum hearings.

The analysis, released this week by the Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, comes at a time when President Donald Trump has vowed massive deportations of immigrant families and the White House has said countless “runaway aliens” skip their court hearings and abscond from deportation proceedings.

But the new data shows that in fact more than 80 percent of adults and children who are part of “family units” across the country do attend all deportation court hearings. And among those with lawyers, 99 percent attend all hearings.

The appearance rate is even higher in San Francisco’s immigration court (which handles cases from Kern County to the Oregon border), likely because Northern California communities have long-standing, robust legal services for immigrants, according to Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president emerita of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

“When the first wave of Central American families began arriving in 2014, the Bay Area legal community moved quickly to organize and strategize how to maximize pro bono resources,” she said.

The data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the U.S. Justice Department office in charge of immigration courts, covered all 46,743 cases of adults and children in family units who had deportation hearings between September 2018, when the court began tracking families, through the end of May, 2019.

“These appearance rates were remarkably high,” the Syracuse University report noted, given problems in court records and the fact that there is no legal requirement that immigrants receive notice of their hearings.

The charging document, called a Notice to Appear, may be sent by regular mail with no verification that it is received. Prior to 1996, such notices had to be served by certified mail.

The report found that addresses were sometimes absent or incorrect -- for example including zip codes that don’t exist or didn’t match the city or state.

The report noted that “When a family doesn’t show up, it doesn’t mean they had intended to ‘skip’ their hearing. Some immigrants who don’t appear simply have not received notification of their hearing.”

The Syracuse University findings that most families do attend hearings run contrary to testimony by Kevin McAleenan, the acting Secretary of Homeland Security, to the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 10.

Under questioning by the committee chair, Sen. Lindsay Graham, who asked what percentage of people show up for asylum hearings, McAleenan said, “We did an expedited pilot with family units this year with ICE and the immigration courts.

Out of those 7,000 cases, 90 [percent] received final orders of removal in absentia.” Graham asked, “90 percent did not show up?” and McAleenan responded, “Correct.”

A Homeland Security spokesman declined repeated requests to provide details about the pilot program or comment on the discrepancy with the Syracuse data.

However the immigration court system, known as the Executive Office of Immigration Review, did begin putting families into an expedited docket in 10 cities last year.

Data on those cases found that out of all family members ordered deported, or “removed,” 85 percent were ordered deported in absentia, meaning the immigrant was not present in court at the time.

Sources familiar with the courts say that whenever a person fails to appear for a hearing they are generally ordered removed, regardless of the strength of their asylum claim.

A 2018 report by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network found that many asylum seekers ordered removed in absentia had legitimate reasons for not appearing in court, including lack of notice, incorrect government information, serious medical problems and language barriers.