Churning the Law
Immigration courts are not the answer to an unjust immigration system
By Aditi Kharod
The second Trump administration’s immigration agenda has frequently made headlines, particularly ICE’s aggressive, violent tactics across the country. Meanwhile, nearly one hundred immigration judges have been fired since Trump returned to the White House and many replaced by military judges with absolutely no experience in immigration law. Reports from immigration attorneys and advocates suggest that this administration, as part of its “mass deportation agenda,” aims to create and stoke an atmosphere of such terror that immigrants will choose to “self-deport” rather than remain in the United States.
Many people observing ICE’s constant human rights abuses may be inclined to suggest that immigration enforcement agencies should use existing and legitimate institutions, like immigration courts, to carry out immigration enforcement. As a student attorney in the Immigration Policy Division of the Access to Justice Clinic at George Washington University Law School, I watched hours of hearings at immigration courts across the Washington, D.C. area. My observations revealed that immigration court, as it has historically functioned and as it is functioning now, is a key part of the machinery behind the horrors we are seeing on the news every day—nothing less than the banality of evil at work.
From what I saw in immigration court from August to December 2025, the Trump administration’s pledge to go after the “worst of the worst” hasn’t played out. Most noncitizens sitting in immigration court do not have so much as a parking ticket. Many of them have been in the United States for decades, with stable jobs and families who love and need them.
U.S. immigration law for years has emphasized family ties to U.S. citizens. Now, though, even when someone has a clear path to a form of immigration relief based on their family ties, ICE attorneys have seemingly been instructed to oppose everything a noncitizen says in court. If a noncitizen did not have any gang ties, criminal history, or any other aggravating factors, ICE attorneys nevertheless argued for deportation because the immigrant’s family in the U.S. would not be negatively impacted.
I also saw an ICE attorney argue for, and an immigration judge accept, the months-long detention of an immigrant who had done things “the right way”—he had gone through the legal channel of applying for permanent residency through his U.S. citizen spouse. But this man remained separated from his family for months, waiting in jail for the Department of Homeland Security to process his paperwork. He had no internet access in detention, and the ICE attorney refused to give any updates about his application. Rather than pressing the ICE attorney, who works at the agency processing this man’s application, to inquire about the process so that he could be released from detention and reunite with his spouse, the judge told the immigrant that it would probably be in his best interest to “self-deport.”
The proceedings I saw were grim for most noncitizen respondents in the court, but it became exponentially worse for those who did not have legal representation. In immigration court, noncitizens are not guaranteed a lawyer if they cannot obtain one themselves, and it was clear that immigration judges by and large gave unrepresented noncitizens’ cases less leeway and less consideration. Immigration judges, contrary to what their title implies, are not part of a politically neutral, impartial branch of the government. Rather, immigration judges are employees of the Department of Justice—which means they’re subject to the same political control as employees of other parts of the executive branch. The lack of care for unrepresented noncitizens is therefore a direct reflection of the current administration’s policies.
When judges did attempt to explain context and consequences to unrepresented noncitizens, they usually sounded annoyed, like they found it inconvenient to make any effort to fulfill their duty of ensuring noncitizens’ due process rights. In one hearing in which the noncitizen had applied for voluntary departure, the judge asked the man whether he had enough money to pay for his own transportation. When he started to explain his answer, the judge yelled at him to stop talking and to just answer “yes” or “no.”
We often think of courtrooms as a place where judges hear both sides of a story and come to a balanced decision after evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of both arguments. But immigration courts, more so than most other courts, operate in the opposite way. In the hearings I saw, the immigration judges appeared to begin their evaluations of each noncitizen’s case with the presumption that they should be removed. And rather than giving noncitizens any meaningful opportunity to present their cases, I saw immigration judges refuse to engage patiently or respectfully with people whose rights are abused by the immigration enforcement scheme every day.
Regardless of whatever superficial “safeguards” the government implements in its attempt to legitimize immigration court procedures, these courts ultimately operate to reinforce its unfettered power to treat noncitizens however it wants. As they currently function, immigration courts are just a cog in the government’s anti-immigrant machine.
Aditi Kharod is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School and an aspiring immigration lawyer and advocate.