Asylum Seeker Killed in Guatemala after Omaha Immigration Judge Ordered Him Deported
Omaha is now the toughest court in the country for asylum seekers, MPI hosts discussion on immigration courts in crisis, an interview with an immigration judge, new legal resources, and more.
Deciding whether someone should be deported or not is a heavy responsibility, but it’s a responsibility that immigration judges assume every day.
Some attorneys I have interviewed over the past decade who represent immigrants have little interest in becoming a judge because they say they could not stomach signing a deportation order.
Other attorneys believe that it’s much better to have competent judges on the bench rather than cede the entire agency to candidates who would just as soon deport everyone who walks into court.
Beyond these individual-level decisions, we can also question whether a system should exist that even provides the possibility of deportation or establishes the institutional position of one (like a judge) who has such tremendous sovereign authority.
Whatever you believe about deportation, however, it is a reality now that the immigration system we have is heavily weighted toward deportation as an outcome. This is why I believe it is crucial for us to pay attention to—and to study, in a systematic scholarly way—how this power is being exercised and what, if anything, we might do to improve a system that most people agree is profoundly broken.
Today’s post covers recent news, new resources, and upcoming events about the U.S. immigration court system. As always, please like (❤️) and share so that together we can connect more people with good resources and insight into the immigration system and fight back against misinformation.
Is Omaha the New Atlanta?
Many of you know that the immigration court in Atlanta, Georgia, has a reputation for being among the most difficult courts in the country for asylum seekers. But in the past year, another court has overtaken Atlanta and has the highest percentage of denials in the country: Omaha.
Omaha’s denial rate for asylum cases recently reached 97% by the end of June 2023, much higher than the Atlanta court which now has a denial rate of down to – gasp! – 78%. That’s a big drop for a court that used to deny 98%.
This was the original post that prompted Turley to look at the courts more closely along with the accompanying graphic.
96.6% of asylum cases decided by judges in Omaha this fiscal year were denied compared to 52.5% nationwide. A variety of factors influence variations in case outcomes. Data through the end of May 2023, available here https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/
So what’s going on in Omaha? A recent article by James Turley for the Flatwater Free Press provides a terrific look at the court. I talked to James for his story, and I want to emphasize that I think he did a just fantastic job of grappling with the complex factors that go into asylum outcomes. It’s a great article. (See a previous article from last November on the Omaha immigration court here.)
Turley takes a nuanced approach by pointing out a variety of factors that drive case outcomes. Judges in Omaha tend to come from ICE rather than the private bar, although that’s not exactly specific to Omaha. The composition of cases plays a role since many applicants are from countries in Latin America with historically less favorable asylum conditions. And he talks to a variety of people in the area who add depth and texture to the story. I really recommend reading it completely.
Perhaps most importantly, the somewhat buried gut punch of the story is this: an asylum seeker was denied asylum in 2020 and ordered deported by an Omaha judge only to be shot dead in Guatemala shortly after being deported.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Lacy Lorenzo remembers saying at the time, “If you send him back, you might as well kill him yourself.”
Larsen denied Lorenzo’s asylum claim in 2020. He was deported to Guatemala, leaving a wife and two children behind in Omaha.
When he arrived, he barely spoke Spanish, and stuck out as an easy target in the Central American country, Lacy Lorenzo said.
In March 2021, Lacy Lorenzo got a call that her husband had been shot dead while walking out of his home. Luis Lorenzo had been in the country less than six months.
In an interview, the widow said she blames Larsen and the Omaha court for her husband’s death.
This is hardly the first time this kind of thing has happened. Last year, a trans woman was killed shortly after being deported to Honduras. A few years ago, The Guardian tallied up several dozen post-deportation deaths, and both the New Yorker and the Washington Post have run articles in recent years on the potentially deadly consequences of deportation orders.
See the following articles.
Brodzinsky, S., & Pilkington, E. (2015). U.S. Government Deporting Central American Migrants to Their Deaths. The Guardian.
Stillman, S. (2018). When Deportation Is a Death Sentence. The New Yorker.
Sieff, K. (2018). When Death Awaits Deported Asylum Seekers. The Washington Post.
I want to be clear that I’m not commenting on the relationship between the judge’s decision and the man’s death; many judges I have talked to take their work seriously and fear this kind of outcome, while I have also observed many judges in the courtroom who appear altogether indifferent to the larger outcomes of their decisions. I don’t know the judge in this case. But I do think these cases illustrate the heavy consequences of asylum denials.
Read Turley’s article “America’s toughest road to asylum runs through the Omaha immigration court.”
An Immigration Judge in Her Own Words
Speaking of thoughtful and serious immigration judges, Judge Mimi Tsankov, who is based in New York City, was interviewed about the current state of the immigration courts. She mentions, among other things, that
there is “no silver bullet” for the number of judges needed to catch up with the number of pending cases, (forthcoming data from TRAC will show that this now totals about 2.4 million cases),
new judges “struggle with the tension between pleasing management and making sure they are constantly fair,”
and (as my readers hopefully know by now), “multiple administrations over time, have manipulated the types of cases that we ultimately have appearing before us and our ability to administratively close cases if we believe that it warrants that.”
Read Judge Tsankov’s interview here.
Webinar: “Immigration Courts in Crisis” hosted by MPI
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is hosting a public discussion about the immigration courts they call “Straining under the Backlog: Fixing a U.S. Immigration Court System in Crisis.”
The panel will be moderated by Doris Meissner, Senior Fellow and Director, U.S. Immigration Policy Program, MPI, and includes the following speakers:
Jojo Annobil, Executive Director, Immigrant Justice Corps
Muzaffar Chishti, MPI Senior Fellow and Director, MPI office at NYU School of Law
David L. Neal, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review, U.S. Justice Department
Blas Nuñez-Neto, Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy and Acting Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The panel discussion is on Thursday, July 20, 2023, at 11:00 a.m. EDT.
Practice Advisory: Post-Departure Motions to Reopen and Reconsider
Did you know that immigration cases can (on rare occasions) be reopened even after a person has left the country or been deported? The first time I came across one of these cases was in Ohio during the fieldwork portion of my dissertation research on the immigration courts and I still find this fascinating. Now, this is pretty specialized, I realize, but nonetheless, I wanted to share the National Immigration Project’s newly issued guidance for immigration attorneys on how to handle these types of cases. Even if you’re not an attorney, you might find this fascinating or at least might want to add it to your digital library.
Legal Aid Society Produces Guide for Immigrants Going to Immigration Court
The Legal Aid Society recently posted a simple explainer called “What You Need to Know About Immigration Court“ for immigrants who may have to go to immigration court accompanied by videos in English and Spanish. It could be a useful introduction not only for immigrants but for people who want to learn the basics of how immigration court works and what kinds of information are important for immigrants facing deportation.
Even more immigration court news
Read The TikTok Trend That Has Immigration Lawyers Worried by Isabela Diaz at Mother Jones (featuring a conversation with immigration attorney Lily Axelrod).
Check out the blog post “Biden's Asylum Bar” by Jeffrey Chase, a great discussion of the problem with applying a rebuttable presumption of eligibility to migrants who don’t get a CBP One appointment.
"Their Pot Convictions Were Erased, but They Still Face Deportation" by immigration attorney Jill Applegate in the New York Times.
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Thank you for reading. If you would like to support public scholarship and receive this newsletter in your inbox, click below to subscribe for free. And if you find this information useful, consider sharing it online or with friends and colleagues. I maintain a barebones site at austinkocher.com and I share immigration data, news, and research on Mastodon (@austinkocher), Twitter (@ackocher), and Instagram (@austinkocher). You can see my scholarly work on Google Scholar.
