Almost 100% of Asylum-seeking Families With Legal Aid Are Showing Up to Court, Analysis Finds

Acting Department of Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan testified to Congress last week that 90% of recently released asylum-seeking families had skipped out on their court dates. It’s one of the reasons cited to justify upcoming roundups of immigrants who are under deportation orders.But a review of close to 47,000 family immigration cases found that most asylum-seeking families do show up to their hearings.McAleenan’s testimony didn’t tell the whole story: He was referring to 7,000 cases that had already been decided in absentia and didn’t include the dozens of thousands of cases that have yet to be resolved.The Trump administration has been tracking family cases since September 2018 due to the surge of Central Americans requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. A new report from Transactional Records Clearinghouse Access, a project that analyzes federal data, found that nearly 100% of asylum-seeking families who have legal representation showed up to their initial or all of their hearings.Last week before Congress, McAleenan painted a dire picture of immigrants who come to the U.S., seek asylum through the courts, then slip into anonymity, failing to show for their court dates.  Continue reading...