Indianapolis, Indiana – In an effort to tackle the nearly 40,000-case backlog in the state and the 1.6 million-case backlog nationwide, a new U.S. immigration court is coming to Indianapolis.
This will be a chance for the court to eliminate a long-standing barrier that immigrant families have faced when it comes to court proceedings.
If “you don’t show up or you cannot be there and all of a sudden there’s a removal order put in place where you’re now deportable from the country,” said Ashley Brunko, a staff attorney for the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, a nonprofit working to help people involved with immigration law. Indiana’s closest immigration court is in Chicago.
According to Brunko, her clients often don’t have the ability to make the three-hour drive. She says some don’t even have a driver’s license yet and, so, have to rely on public transportation.
With a court in Indianapolis, “if we need to file something at the last minute, we can go there and do that. Our people don’t have to be trying to figure out all-day child care, all-day transportation, the cost of a hotel,” said Erin Warrner, director of immigration and survivor justice at the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic. “Most of our people are involved in some type of humanitarian immigration relief … people who are fleeing, asking for asylum because of persecution in their home countries, people who have been victims of crimes either in their country or here in the United States.”
A spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a part of the U.S Department of Justice, gave I-Team 8 a statement.
“The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) plans to open a new immigration court in Indianapolis in the calendar year 2023. The Indianapolis Immigration Court will be located in the Minton-Capehart Federal Building, an existing federal building. We expect to have about 40 employees at the facility, including immigration judges and other court staff. Additional details on the timeline, hiring plans, or caseload are not available at this time. EOIR constantly monitors its caseload nationwide to meet the needs of all those with business before the agency, and opening new immigration courts in high-volume areas is one way to meet our stakeholders’ needs.”
According to Warrner, the new court will be a game-changer for their clients and for them. “We really get to just stop and look at the one person and the one person that we’re able to help, and I think that that is really what we all try to focus on at the clinic.”
