The Procedural Fortress of US Immigration Law

Immigrants face many obstacles. This paper reveals a less obvious one: the procedural system designed to adjudicate immigration removal cases. In the United States, the procedural system itself has become a barrier for immigrants. A structure intended to provide procedural safeguards for immigrants has instead become an obstruction. Instead of facilitating fair and efficient process, the system is dysfunctional. It is collapsing under its own weight and is unable to adjudicate consistently in a fair and competent manner. This failed procedural system is a barrier to immigration that needs to be fixed. The failure to fix it, despite longstanding and well-known shortcomings, reveals that procedural fairness is not a policy priority in the United States