Alfredo Valdez has been waiting for nearly 25 years to adjust his immigration status through his dad, keeping his end of the deal by diligently renewing his work permit every year. He’s doing his part. The guy supposedly in charge of running the government wasn’t, though. Because of Donald Trump’s shutdown, Valdez could be left waiting for another two years to get his green card.
Immigration judges were only able to hear cases involving detained immigrants during the recent shutdown, resulting in at least 40,000 other cases getting canceled—cases that will have to go the back of the line in an already overburdened system. Meanwhile, deportation arrests continued during the shutdown, forcing one man to go into sanctuary because he couldn’t go into court to plead his case.
"With the government shutdown, mail basically goes into a box," said Miguel Ramirez Valiente’s attorney Lisa Guerra. “There are no judges to decide that motion to reopen. There is no office of chief council to speak with about the case. We are basically in legal limbo, waiting for the government to reopen.”
Valdez, unlike Ramirez Valiente, already had a date on the books, and drove an hour-and-a-half to the courthouse. He knew the government was already shut down, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He had even asked his former manager to take the day off to testify on his behalf. But “after a phone call to his lawyer confirmed that the court was still shuttered, a dejected Alfredo turned the car around.”
Trump, of course, loves falsely accusing immigrants of not showing up to court, claiming that “almost like a level of 3 percent” of asylum seekers don’t show up for their cases. In reality, it’s “almost like” more than 90 percent go to their hearings. It’s moronic to think that people waiting for a chance to live here legally would skip out on their hearing, but then again this is Donald Trump.