JDC Joins Immigration Advocates Nationwide in Calling for an End to the Dedicated Docket
June 23, 2023, San Francisco—In May of 2021, the Biden Administration implemented the Dedicated Docket in numerous immigration courts nationwide, including the San Francisco Immigration Court. Families whose cases are on the Dedicated Docket have a case completion goal of only 300 days, which is hardly enough time for most newly arrived families to hire counsel and for those attorneys that they hire to adequately prepare their cases for trial. Two years later, the docket continues to present ongoing challenges with due process, including unreasonable deadlines, hostility toward pro se respondents, and inability to access counsel.
“Many pro se respondents that we speak to on the Dedicated Docket indicate that they often have difficulty with just scheduling a consultation with a local immigration attorney, let alone hiring one to represent them in their cases,” states Monica Oca Howell, Supervising Attorney for the Attorney of the Day Program, housed within the Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco. “Some judges on the Dedicated Docket also continue to set unreasonable and arbitrary deadlines for the submission of asylum applications for pro se respondents, creating a demand for pro se I-589s that our local non-profit organizations are unable to meet.”
In October 2022, JDC assisted with drafting a letter directed towards Secretary Mayorkas, Attorney General Garland, and Deputy Assistant Lawrence, calling attention to the injustices on the docket and asking that the Administration either end the docket or take steps to provide additional procedural safeguards on the docket. On June 22, 2023, JDC, along with 75 other organizations nationwide, signed off on a follow up letter, pointing out that the docket continues to neither be fair, nor expedient, and calling on the Administration once more to halt the docket.
If you’d like to learn more, UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy and the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program have issued detailed reports about the challenges that the Dedicated Docket presents for both families and attorneys taking on Dedicated Docket cases.
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The Justice & Diversity Center (JDC) advances fairness and equality by providing pro bono legal services to low-income people and educational programs that foster diversity in the legal profession. JDC is the largest legal services providers in San Francisco. JDC’s programs serve approximately 9,500 disadvantaged San Franciscans a year, with the overarching goal of assisting the community’s most vulnerable members with accessing the judicial system and strengthening their personal, professional, and economic security.