An interesting article this morning in Miami New Times about activists being arrested on purpose to infiltrate immigration detention facilities. While this is quite a questionable practice, this overview of the difference between immigration court and everyone-else court is a good one:
“The concept of due process is held dear as a central piece of the American justice system. Anyone prosecuted under the criminal code has the right to know the charges against him, to be tried in public by a jury of his peers, and to be appointed a lawyer if he cannot afford one. But immigration courts operate in the netherworld of administrative law, where the rules are different. Detainees aren’t afforded public defenders, and at BTC, a notorious judge oversees their hearings in a courtroom typically without witnesses, where the docket can be obtained only through Freedom of Information Act requests.”