Nicholas Nehamas

Thanks for having me.

Well, I think that when most Americans think about President Trump's immigration crackdown, they picture the shock and awe campaign that dominated the headlines for months.

The images of federal agents being sent into U.S.

cities to do mass raids and arrest as many immigrants as possible.

Exactly.

But what we found is that while that was sucking up most of the attention, the administration was also engaged in a quieter, much more meticulous overhaul of a hugely consequential part of the immigration system.

And that's the immigration court system.

Hmm.

That's basically the process that decides an immigrant's fate and can order them removed from the country.

Yes, right.

And our reporting shows that the Trump administration's strategy for overhauling the immigration court system has been extremely effective.

And it's essentially turned the courts and immigration judges in particular into their number one tool for achieving mass deportations.

Yeah.

So first off, it's really important to understand that immigration courts work completely differently than how we think about, say, criminal courts.

If you cross the border illegally and you're detained, whether that's inside the country or at the border, you get a court date.

And on that date, you have to show up to immigration court and make the case for why you should be allowed to stay in the country, why you qualify for some sort of legal protection like asylum.

And you're not guaranteed a lawyer.

So if you can't afford one, you're there on your own arguing your own case.

And who you're arguing against is the federal government, which acts as the prosecutor trying to deport you.

and there's no jury so the person overseeing the whole process weighing all the evidence and making the final decision about whether someone should be deported or not is the immigration judge and what's so unique about this system is that the courts and the judges are not part of the judicial branch they are part of the executive branch so although they wear robes they're called judges