Due Process Crisis: Lawmakers and Legal Experts Sound the Alarm and Call for Protections
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 26, 2025
CONTACT: Melissa Stek, melissa@masadc.com
Jenna Behringer, Jenna.Behringer@mail.house.gov
Due Process Crisis:
Lawmakers and Legal Experts Sound the Alarm and Call for Protections
A recording of the congressional hearing and press briefing is available HERE
WASHINGTON, DC – In recent weeks, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have been on the rise. ICE is now targeting people for arrest in immigration court after their scheduled hearings. This disturbing trend reflects the Trump administration’s broader efforts to erode access to legal services and due process in immigration proceedings. At the same time, Congress is advancing one of the most anti-immigrant budget bills in U.S. history—despite growing opposition to mass deportation and support for due process.
In response, members of Congress and legal experts provided direct insight and legal analysis on the nation’s due process crisis in a congressional shadow hearing underscoring the urgent need to defend basic legal protections. This was the second shadow hearing in Representative Pramila Jayapal’s series, Kidnapped and Disappeared, which aims to further examine the unlawful immigration actions of the Trump administration.
A recording of the congressional shadow hearing, Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Weaponization of Immigration Courts, is available here. A resource kit for members and press is available here.
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) said, “Republicans like to talk about how they support immigrants who quote ‘do things the right way.’ Now that they control Congress and the White House, they should be putting their money where their mouth is and ensuring that the legal immigration process remains open to those who pursue it—but that’s not what’s happening. They have arrested people at their citizenship interviews, their check-in appointments with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and increasingly, at immigration court. These actions are a direct attack on the legal immigration system and the people who are trying to follow all the legal steps. These actions only serve to make the immigration system even more chaotic and unjust than it already is. Just when you think this administration cannot sink any lower, they get out a shovel and keep digging.”
The Honorable A. Ashley Tabaddor, Immigration Judge (ret.) said, “Due process in a courtroom means that every part of the system functions fairly and in concert. That requires an independent judge, a level playing field, and a safe, accessible forum for all participants. Yet noncitizens have no right to appointed counsel—even in life-or-death matters. Now, the Trump administration claims that immigration judges are effectively at-will employees, directly undermining their independence. At the same time, immigration courts are being transformed into enforcement zones, deterring participation and eroding public trust. As a former judge, I can tell you: when even one part of the machine breaks—when judges are undermined, when legal support disappears, or fear keeps people from appearing—the entire system collapses. And when that happens, it doesn’t just fail immigrants. It fails all of us.”
Azadeh Erfani, Director of Policy, National Immigrant Justice Center, said, “Nothing is off the table for ICE to meet Trump’s arrest quotas and build the largest mass detention system in recorded history. First, they took away all legal services so no one could represent themselves. Next, they raided the courts and took away access to judges. And lately, they have set traps at ICE check-in appointments, where individuals with pending cases trying to comply with their proceedings are shackled and disappeared into remote jails. As ICE tramples all semblance of due process and the rule of law, they are terrorizing our communities.”
Bettina Rodriguez Schlegel, Chief of Staff, Acacia Center for Justice, said, “The Trump administration’s attacks on due process have upended the lives and futures of our families, neighbors, and friends. In addition to the profound impact on our communities, ending legal access programs has further exacerbated the limited capacity of the immigrant legal services field. Alongside our inspiring network of legal service provider partners, we will continue to fight for these lifesaving programs to be restored so that families, children, and adults aren’t forced to navigate our country’s increasingly dehumanizing immigration system alone.”
Gillian Rowland-Kain, Interim Director of Programs, Immigrant ARC, said, “This is more than a policy shift. It’s a coordinated effort to sideline due process and deport people without giving them the opportunity to present their case. What should have been a space for due process is instead a site of fear. Masked and armed federal agents are arresting and intimidating people who attend court. Volunteers and attorneys are being surveilled. Every day, our members are in those courtrooms—often the only ones there to stand beside immigrants facing an unjust system. We will continue to do our work and to push back.”
Shayna Kessler, Director of the Advancing Universal Representation initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, said, “There is no justice when immigration officials turn courtrooms into traps. The Trump administration’s cruel playbook—fast-track deportations without hearings, ambushing people at routine check-ins, and abducting community members in court—has weaponized the immigration adjudication process. Now, people simply trying to follow the rules are being separated from their families and disappeared into Trump’s detention and deportation machine. These extreme violations of due process will destroy the integrity of our legal system and people’s trust in it for years to come. To uphold the right to due process for all, Congress must pass the Fairness to Freedom Act, which will ensure that every person facing the devastating outcomes of deportation has a legal advocate by their side to help them fight for their freedom.”
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Fairness to Freedom: The Campaign for Universal Representation was launched by the National Partnership for New Americans and the Vera Institute of Justice in April 2022 with a coalition of over 200 organizations and legal service providers. The campaign’s goal is to support the passage of the Fairness to Freedom Act to establish a federal right to representation for all immigrants facing deportation.
The National Immigrant Justice Center is a nongovernmental organization dedicated to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for all immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers through a unique combination of direct services, policy reform, impact litigation, and public education. Visit immigrantjustice.org.
The Acacia Center for Justice is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that coordinates and supports a national network of human rights defenders who protect the legal rights of all people at risk of immigration detention or deportation.
Immigrant ARC is a coalition of 85 nonprofit legal service providers across New York State. They are a community of legal advocates and an immigration law training and policy institute, working together to fight for New York’s immigrant communities.
