Alison Peck's "The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts"

Alison Peck is Professor of Law and Codirector of the Immigration Law Clinic at West Virginia University College of Law.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts: War, Fear, and the Roots of Dysfunction, and reported the following:

Fascinating! From the first line, page 99 portrays the very event that provoked the central question of this book: Why are the immigration courts not really “courts” at all, but actually an office of the Department of Justice, a law enforcement agency?

On page 99, we meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt in May 1940, just after the Nazis had invaded France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In this press conference, FDR oh-so-casually announces a decision that, eighty years later, has turned out to be momentous (and increasingly disastrous):

“No, there is only one thing coming up,” Roosevelt began, then stopped. “Oh, I suppose it is all right to mention it now, though you should all wait until the thing actually goes to Congress.” The following day, he announced, he would submit Reorganization Plan No. V for congressional approval.

“I held off last winter because there were very definitely two sides to the case,” Roosevelt said. The new plan, only one page, would transfer [the Immigration and Naturalization Service] from Labor to Justice. “Today the situation has changed, and it is necessary for us, for obvious national defense reasons, to make that change at this time.” He said he hoped Congress would approve it before it recessed for the summer.

“Mr. President, does that fit in with the general measure to prevent espionage and sabotage?” one reporter asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you contemplating any other measures of a similar nature?”

“No comments on that at the present time.”

Fast forward eighty-one years. As an immigration lawyer, I’ve been witnessing firsthand how the location of the immigration courts in DOJ has enabled the executive branch to manipulate case outcomes to serve political goals. Part One of the book explains what’s happening to people in the immigration courts today as a result of the attorney general’s control over case outcomes and court procedures. Part Two looks backward, taking you inside the White House to find out what FDR meant when he said he “held off” for a while because there were “definitely two sides to the case.” I uncovered the events that led him to fear that a “fifth column” of Nazis spies who looked like locals would sabotage the country from within – a rumor that turned out to be mostly Nazi propaganda. Part Three brings us back to today, analyzing what we can do about a system that was set up in response to a hoax eight decades ago and continues to distort immigration justice today.

Learn more about The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts at the University of California Press.

--Marshal Zeringue