The walls of the Los Angeles Immigration Court's 15th floor information center are covered with a week's worth of hearing schedules for about 30 courtrooms in the downtown building near Pershing Square.
Daily schedules for the immigration judges vary — some hear nearly 40 cases a morning to briefly move them along in the system, while others have two afternoon hearings where it could take hours to make final rulings.
The Los Angeles Immigration Court — where Ventura County residents typically report for deportation proceedings — is one of 59 throughout the nation for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency under the U.S. Department of Justice.
The office "is currently managing the largest caseload the immigration court system has ever seen," the agency reported in the Federal Register.
At the end of the 2013 fiscal year, more than 350,300 cases were pending. Nearly 49,500 of them were stalled in the Los Angeles Immigration Court — the most of any court in the country.
The average time to complete an immigration case was 589 days as of June, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center at Syracuse University. But the wait time in Los Angeles averaged 823 days — more than two years.
Gabriella Navarro-Busch, a Ventura-based immigration lawyer who has been representing clients in the Los Angeles court for 13 years, said cases often take up to five years.
"There's always been a backlog," Navarro-Busch said. "The backlog has increased because of detention and enforcement. A lot of people who are in detention are trying to seek asylum, and everyone has to be given an interview."
The overwhelmed system recently gained national attention as a surge of unaccompanied children crossing the southwest border became highly politicized.
The Department of Homeland Security reported 57,000 unaccompanied children — primarily from Central America — were apprehended at the border between October and June.
Officials expect the total number of immigrant children caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally without a parent could reach 90,000 by the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year — a nearly fourfold increase from the 24,000 detained by border agents last fiscal year.
"We haven't really faced the brunt of the number of children cases that have been dropped before the court," Navarro-Busch said.
A temporary shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children was opened at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme to provide relief for the 100 crowded permanent shelters near the southwest border.
Since opening June 6, the Navy shelter has housed nearly 1,550 children ages 13 to 17.
"There are probably some kids from the base who will be placed in L.A. County," said Navarro-Busch, who recently started providing legal aid to the children. But she said only about 100 children discharged from the shelter have been placed with a relative or sponsor in California, and none have been placed in Ventura County.
COURT RELIEF
The White House on July 8 asked Congress to approve $3.7 billion in emergency funding to address the increase in Central American immigrants entering the country. The proposal included $64 million for the Department of Justice to hire additional immigration judges and increase court capacity to speed up cases.
To deal with the increased caseload, an interim rule took effect July 11 to allow the Executive Office for Immigration Review to designate temporary judges for renewable six-month terms. Currently, there are 250 immigration judges working throughout the nation.
The agency is "currently in the midst of the application and appointment process," with the "hope that temporary immigration judges will be appointed by early fall," spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said in an email. The border crisis led the agency to postpone an August legal training conference for immigration judges, Mattingly said.
The court system also has started several programs to remove certain cases from the docket. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys were directed in 2011 to exercise prosecutorial discretion "to dismiss, suspend or close a particular case" if a defendant facing deportation possesses certain qualities, according to a memo from then-ICE director John Morton.
That includes people who do not have a criminal record, have been living in the United States for an extended period, have children or immediate family members who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and received a U.S. education.
As of June 30, nearly 25 percent of the 43,300 cases closed in Los Angeles Immigration Court since October 2012 involved prosecutorial discretion.
Nationally, 8.5 percent of closed cases involved prosecutorial discretion in fiscal year 2013 — up from 4.7 percent the previous year.
"Every single one of my cases, I look at it for potential prosecutorial discretion," Navarro-Busch said. "If we really don't want to deport the breadwinner of a family with U.S. citizen children, I think the program has worked really, really well."
Administratively closing a case using prosecutorial discretion is not a deportation cancellation and does not grant permanent residence, but it will temporarily remove the case from the court docket and keep the person in the United States, Navarro-Busch said.
"The moment they are put in deportation proceedings, they become eligible for a work permit while their case is pending," she said. "With administrative closure, the client can continue to renew their work permit."
That was the result of one of Judge Jan D. Latimore's 18 scheduled removal hearings Monday morning in a packed courtroom on the 17th floor of the Los Angeles court.
Latimore and the ICE attorney agreed to grant one young woman prosecutorial discretion because she has lived in the country for more than 20 years, has a child who is a U.S. citizen, does not have a criminal record and is completing her GED.
Latimore agreed to close the case and told the crying woman to finish her GED "for yourself, for your son, for your future."
"Don't disappoint me," the judge said.
But prosecutorial discretion is not granted consistently, Navarro-Busch said.
SEEKING ASYLUM
Ingrid, a 28-year-old woman from El Salvador, testified before Judge Gita Vahid-Tehrani during a 2.5-hour hearing Monday afternoon on her asylum application filed with the court more than two years ago.
Despite her lack of a criminal record, and a 2-year-old daughter born in the United States, Ingrid was not offered prosecutorial discretion because she had not consistently lived here since her first entry in 2007.
Ingrid tried to claim asylum based on her fear of returning with her child to her hometown of Sensuntepeque, where her mother abused her physically and emotionally.
"She would use any excuse to harm me," Ingrid said in Spanish, adding her mother threatened her life many times.
Vahid-Tehrani said she was sympathetic but she ultimately denied the request because the persecutor was her mother and Ingrid could live elsewhere in her native country as a "college-educated woman."
To qualify for asylum, applicants must prove they face persecution in their home country based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular group.
The minors coming to the United States are typically applying for asylum or special immigrant juvenile status, said Vanessa Frank, another Ventura-based immigration lawyer.
"Every immigration court is allotted a certain number of visas every year, and that's why the relief is difficult to retain," Navarro-Busch said. "These visas are closely guarded."
After an application for asylum or cancellation of removal is denied, the defendant can appeal to the Bureau of Immigration Appeals within 30 days. Cases can linger there for one or two years, then move on to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and take up to four years, Navarro-Busch said.
And if "the defendant becomes eligible for a different form of relief to gain some type of legal status, they can always reopen the case," she said.