DALLAS _ The Department of Justice has postponed deportation hearings for most immigrants not in detention effective Wednesday.
A rare alliance of immigration judges, trial attorneys and defense attorneys had complained that crowded courts were putting the public at risk of coronavirus infection.
The postponement will last at least until April 10, 2020, said the court agency within DOJ. It comes as a historic backlog of 1.1 million cases has already clogged the nation's 68 immigration courts.
The National Association of Immigration Judges quickly criticized the move as "jeopardizing public safety" because it does not cover court hearings for detained immigrants and new border tent courts for asylum-seekers who wait in Mexico under the Migration Protection Protocols.
The busy Dallas immigration courts have a detained docket and the Fort Worth courts often hear MPP cases and cases for those detained in the nation's detention system. Fort Worth judges do hearings exclusively by video-conferencing, and the public isn't allowed into proceedings.
Judges and the American Immigration Lawyers Association are fighting the classification of asylum seekers as "detained" because the asylum-seekers aren't jailed in the Mexican border cities. Many live in a tent camp in Matamoros and in the shelters of Ciudad Juarez.
A handful of immigration courts have been closed entirely by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the DOJ court agency.
