MIAMI — Six nonprofit organizations that provide legal services to immigrants and practice in the immigration court system sued members of the Trump administration – including President Trump – for keeping immigration courts open during the coronavirus pandemic.

The suit contends that by keeping the immigration courts open and forcing attorneys, judges and those fighting their immigration status to appear in person at the court, the federal officials have turned the court system into a “public health hazard.” The Trump administration, the groups claim, is using COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, “as a tool to further weaponize the immigration court system.”

The suit, filed Friday in a Portland, Ore., district court, asks for an immediate restraining order against Trump, Attorney General William Barr, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Executive Office for Immigration Review and its director, James McHenry.

The Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Innovation Law Project, Santa Fe Dreamers Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center contend that the Trump administration’s actions in the course of the “unprecedented pandemic, have threatened the lives of the legal teams that represent the immigrants and the communities in which they live and work.”

“Notwithstanding the COVID-19 crisis that has unfolded in every U.S. state and 176 countries worldwide – a crisis proven to worsen exponentially day by day in congregate spaces like courthouses — Defendants continue to require attorneys, respondents, judges, and staff to appear in person at immigration courts,” the lawsuit reads.

In addition, the groups ask for relief because the administration continues to “refuse to extend immigration court deadlines even though compliance is dangerous and often impossible; have failed to provide adequate notice of emergency court closures and procedures; and have ordered immigration judges to fast-track cases to completion — and, ultimately, to order deportation — in the absence of respondents and counsel.”

Such conduct, the groups argue, “has turned the immigration court system into a public health hazard. . . . Without such relief, the very health and lives of staff of the Plaintiff organizations, as well as every individual who has contact with any person involved in the immigration court system, is in great jeopardy.”

State and local immigration judges, prosecutors and immigration lawyers, including those in Miami-Dade, have been pushing for such court closures since the coronavirus crisis escalated in early March. The legal groups said they were being kept at work despite having been exposed to the coronavirus at a time when government mandates — now a shelter-at-home order in many parts of South Florida, including Miami — enforce social distancing.

According to an email obtained by the Herald, immigration court staffers and judges at a courthouse were told by court management earlier this week that the decisions to close are out of their control.

“Decisions for closure are beyond the agency level; but rather are forwarded to (the Department of Justice) and ultimately the White House,” the email said. “Please understand that decisions for court closures are based upon individual incidents at each respective court. I have not been privy to the incidents that ultimately led to the closure(s).”

Immigration judges ultimately report to Barr, who reports directly to the president. Trump, Barr and their team, have not publicly responded to the lawsuit.

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