Time for Electronic Filing with the Immigration Court System – Time to Save the Enviroment, Money and Time
Given the continued annual growth of actual deportations and commencement of deportation proceedings, Attorney Raymond Lahoud called for the implementation of an electronic filing system for the Immigration Courts that is similar to that in the federal court system.
“Deportation proceedings are, without any doubt, the fastest proceedings that exist in the American Judicial System and potential deportees are rapidly transported across the nation and pushed out of the country, often leaving families wondering what is happening and attorneys racing across the nation locating clients and attempting to establish jurisdiction in one, local Immigration Court that is close to the potential deportee’s family and counsel,” said Lahoud, a leading immigration law and deportation defense attorney.
“Most deportation attorneys, like those thatt practice across the United States and if an electronic filing system were implemented in the Immigration Court system that is similar to that which the rest of the federal courts have,” said Lahoud, who has offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, “clients will certainly have more effective representation that is quick acting and will allow attorneys to give clients and their families peace of mind.”
In today’s Immigration Courts, everything must be paper filed and the speed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) moves potential deportees around the nation, it is often difficult to establish jurisdiction for a client have their bond hearings. Once a client is moved to far off detention facilities, they are far removed from their families and attorneys and it is difficult to provide them with effective and affordable representation—something that stands in the way of ensuring due process for these individuals.
“There were nearly 400,000 deportations last year and I wonder how many of those individuals were given the opportunity to properly defend against deportation,” said Lahoud who has handled deportation cases from coast to coast. “With electronic filing, attorneys can act quickly—as soon as ICE makes an arrest, the Department of Homeland Security can respond promptly and court administrators can get motions and the like to Judges for near immediate review, regardless of what the filing provides,” noted Lahoud.
Deportation Attorney Lahoud also expressed the importance of electronic filing to conserve paper, energy and money: “hundreds of thousands of pages are printed, thousands of miles are driven for overnight deliveries and government and families of potential deportees spend millions of dollars on the expenses of paper filings weekly for an ineffective and outdated manner of filing documents that was put behind the rest of the federal court system years ago in its implementation of its own electronic filing system,” Lahoud continued, “when these losses are coupled with the due process issues caused by paper filings, electronic filing seems to be the most common sense thing to do and the more it is delayed, the more we all have to lose, especially when the environment, due process and the federal budget can use any help to preserve and protect them.”
