LA immigration court observers sound alarm over lack of due process in legal proceedings

Numerous times over the last year, Orange County resident Sara volunteered online to livestream an element of the Trump administration’s deportation apparatus that few bear witness to: immigration court.

Sara, who is using a pseudonym for fear of retaliation, told LA Public Press she regularly observed immigrants appearing in immigration court in Los Angeles County without legal representation or interpretation services.

“It’s a complete rupture of due process and justice for a lot of these individuals,” Sara said.

Sara’s experience reflects what other volunteer observers witnessed in immigration proceedings in LA County, according to a report released last month by Court Watch LA.

The report draws from 47 observations by Court Watch volunteers who, from February to September 2025, noted repeated court delays; the prioritization of deportation over alternatives, such as voluntary departure, filing an appeal or seeking asylum; and a general lack of due process that the organization said has led to immigrants getting unnecessarily deported.

The Court Watch report, titled Canary in the Coal Mine, said court watchers saw immigrants’ asylum claims denied while lacking the appropriate counsel or language support to understand the proceedings. When asylum seekers nationwide didn’t have legal counsel, 77% were denied asylum, according to an analysis of federal data by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University

“We document how the legal system actually functions,” Court Watch said in its 51-page report. “[Immigration courts] are where deportation is legally authorized and where due process is either realized or eroded.”

The report does not include a tally for the number of times each of these issues were observed by its volunteer reporters.

Six months before immigration raids started to make headlines across LA last summer, the organization began to train volunteers to observe immigration court hearings and document any injustice.

The report was released as former immigration judges criticize the Trump administration for pressuring courts to issue as many deportations as possible and deny asylum claims. The Trump administration is openly recruiting “deportation” judges amid a hiring spree that has brought in 140 judges with little to no experience practicing immigration law. More than 200 judges have been fired or retired in the last year.

As of March, there were 3.2 million pending cases in immigration courts nationwide, which are part of the executive branch and operated by the Justice Department. More than 96,000 of those cases are pending in LA County and 2.3 million of overall pending cases are for asylum, according to TRAC.

Neither the Justice Department nor the DHS Office of Principal Legal Advisor, whose prosecutors present evidence for non-citizens’ deportations, responded to emailed requests for comments on the report.

Though the hearings are public, volunteer court watchers like Sara said they are routinely turned away from or kicked out of proceedings where immigrants’ fates are decided.

Sara told LA Public Press that watching immigration hearings, which are open to the public online and in-person, is a critical accountability measure as arrests and detentions of immigrants have surged nationwide in the last year.

“You feel very hopeless and helpless, because there’s nothing as an observer that I can do to step in to help the individual in that moment,” Sara said.

As a volunteer observer, Sara said she noted that non-citizens were frequently unprepared to face DHS prosecutors, appeared in court without counsel and received deportation orders when viable claims for asylum or other legal remedies existed, often because conditions inside detention centers were so harsh.

Immigrants detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center near LA filed a federal lawsuit in January alleging that “inhumane” conditions at the facility are intentional and meant to push people to self-deport or accept deportation orders.

“The conditions in the centers were so horrific that it really forces people to just be like, ‘I want out, I can no longer take it,’” Sara said.

Immigration courts are driving mass deportations

One of the biggest factors affecting hearings, according to volunteers, was the lack of accurate interpretation for immigration hearings, which immigrants can request be provided at the government’s expense, according to the Justice Department’s immigration court practice manual.

The Constitution guarantees all people due process, which means fair treatment under the law and a right to defend themselves in court. These rights extend to noncitizens as well, according to the American Immigration Council.

Court watchers also noted interpreter shortages, late arrivals, dialect mismatches, and proceedings without interpreters even when one was needed, according to the report, though it did not specify the number of times this conduct was observed.

In some cases, Sara said ICE prosecutors would petition a judge to deny bond for a non-citizen after alleging, without evidence, that they were involved in criminal activity.

Many immigrants without attorneys abandoned viable claims for relief or chose deportation without understanding their options, according to the report. In some instances, the report said, judges expressed frustration with immigrants rather than provide them clarification about legal proceedings.

In one hearing at Adelanto mentioned in the report, a court watcher observed a judge get frustrated with a detained immigrant man who at a bond hearing requested relief via voluntary departure, which allows people to leave the country without a deportation order while preserving the potential to return to the U.S. legally.

The judge explained that a separate voluntary departure hearing would be needed and gave the man an “impossible ultimatum”: either wait more than a month for a hearing or accept deportation, which typically results in being barred temporarily or permanently from reentering the U.S.

“If you want deportation then I can do that today,” the judge said, according to the court observer.

An analysis of national immigration court records by the website OpenImmigration found that only 26.7% of non-citizens who were issued “removal” or deportation orders had legal representation when they faced an ICE prosecutor.

Most immigrants are entitled to a deportation hearing, unless DHS has placed them into expedited removal proceedings, which swiftly deports immigrants without a chance for them to consult an attorney.

DHS has leaned on removing parole hearings and arresting immigrants at courthouses to move them into expedited removal, according to the Brennan Center.

The Court Watch report said these conditions demonstrate the need for volunteer observers. Immigration judges, the report noted, are not publicly elected officers — they’re appointees of the attorney general — and are subject only to a few reliable accountability mechanisms.

Rubi, a Court Watch LA staff member, told LA Public Press that surveillance and enforcement elements of the mass deportation system create a “dragnet” that can also criminalize citizens, especially people of color.

“This is a misappropriation of our tax dollars,” said Rubi, who is using a pseudonym to protect her safety. “All those warehouses that they’re buying, they’re going to fill those cages, all that surveillance infrastructure is going to be used, not just in the immigration context.”

What a volunteer “court watcher” witnessed at immigration hearings

Sara said she regularly experienced hostility from judges or clerks denying her entry to virtual immigration court hearings which, aside from asylum hearings, are public and don’t require a notice to the court before attending as an observer, according to the report.

While court watchers aren’t required to notify court staff of their presence, judges may ask visitors to identify themselves at the start of a hearing, according to federal policy, though rules don’t say it’s required for observers to have their cameras on or identify their affiliations.

“​​I was told to ask for permission [to appear as an observer], that I needed to have my camera on, and disclose fully who I was with,” Sara said. “I didn’t feel welcomed and could sense the hostility from the judges. I didn’t want the judges to be angry, and have that affect the people whose cases are [pending].”

Observers at both in-person and virtual hearings, faced access barriers, according to the report. Observers noted that in-person hearings at detention centers were difficult to access due to generally being in remote locations with strict security, the report said.

“Observers were turned away by clerks, left indefinitely in virtual waiting rooms, ejected mid-hearing, and questioned about their organizational affiliations,” the report said.

Without citing specific examples, Court Watch said in the report that documented injustices in immigration proceedings “would remain invisible without organized, persistent observation,” but also noted that the observers themselves also face threats from the federal government.

In November, The Guardian reported the FBI spied on private, encrypted group chats for New York immigrant rights activists who organized court watch efforts.

Sara said her suggestion to lawmakers would be to allocate public funding for legal aid for non-citizens in immigration court.

“That would be one step to providing people dignity, due process, and the respect they deserve as they navigate this very difficult process that for some of them is their first time facing,” she said.

In consultation with legal aid organizations, Court Watch gives all volunteers a one-hour training on how to safely document court hearings online and in-person and how to understand immigration courts and removal proceedings.

Court Watch said in its report it trained more than 65 people, mostly based in LA County, to observe a range of immigration hearings from July to November, including bond, master calendar, and individual merit hearings.

Master calendar hearings are preliminary proceedings where non-citizens are informed of charges against them and advised of their rights. In bond hearings, non-citizens may seek release from custody or reconsideration of the bond amount.

At individual merit hearings, non-citizens present evidence for immigration relief eligibility while the government presents arguments in favor of removal. The judge issues a decision that may include deportation, relief, a hold or termination of the case, or voluntary departure.

Volunteers observed proceedings in two legal tracks: hearings for people detained by ICE and hearings for non-detained individuals.

Legal proceedings analyzed in the report were held in 2025 at the Roybal Federal Building, Van Nuys Immigration Court, Adelanto Immigration Court and Detention Facility, and the West LA Immigration Court.

Other findings in the Court Watch LA report

• Immigration related scams and fraud by non-immigration lawyers, especially in the absence of publicly-funded legal counsel, are so rampant that judges have had to warn non-citizens in court about the widespread double-dealing.

• The immigration court system’s backlog of more than 3.6 million cases, including 2 million asylum cases, traps families in a legal limbo lasting an average of nearly two years. Court watchers observed repeated administrative delays in LA courts, including a case pending for six years without resolution.

• Court watchers observed people with cognitive or mental health disabilities receiving no government-appointed counsel and courts making no effort to determine their competency to take part in hearings.