“Gonzalez-Ardia,” the immigration court judge reads out as he hears his twelfth removal proceeding of the afternoon. A little girl with braids, dressed in a pink coat and pants, just shy of seven, jumps off her seat. The girl holds her mother’s hand as the pair make their way past the wooden banister towards the defendant’s table, opposite from the government attorney. The girl clumsily climbs into the wooden chair almost twice her size, as her mother slips a pair of headsets on her.

“Are you Hallery?” the judge asks in English. The words flow through the headset as the courtroom translator repeats the question in Spanish.

The pair have driven 13 hours from their home in Illinois to the Executive Office of Immigration Review court in Newark, New Jersey. The mother points to the little girl who stares intently at the translator.

The removal hearing is not for the mother. It’s for the little girl—and she is without an attorney.

Of the 40 or so people who appear before the judge over the next two and a half hours only two have attorneys, one of whom phones into court. For each defendant that appears before him, the judge repeats the same question over and over: “Do you have a lawyer?”

The answer is almost always the same: “No.

“It’s so depressing when you’re a lawyer and you go into immigration court and you see how many people don’t have representation,” Michele Pistone, a law professor at Villanova University, explains. “It’s kind of like they’re on this assembly line and we say that we’re giving them ‘process,’ but they don’t understand what’s happening,” she says.

For precisely this reason, in 1958, the Department of Justice (DOJ) established the Recognition & Accreditation (R&A) Program—to increase legal representation for low-income immigrants, according to the American Bar Association. The Program certifies accredited representatives, non-lawyers who can represent immigrants in court. Accredited representatives must work at non-profits designated as recognized organizations.

Despite the program’s 66 year history, there are still 1,413 undocumented people in the U.S. for every “charitable legal professional,” according to the Center for Migration Studies (CMS). In New Jersey, that number increases nearly two-fold, to 2,687 undocumented people per legal professional.

Nicole Rodriguez, who works at a New Jersey non-profit helping domestic violence survivors apply for asylum, is one of those accredited representatives—taking on over 60 cases at a time. Immigrants in removal proceedings who have legal representation, like Rodriguez’s clients, are 15 times more likely to seek relief, and 5.5 times more likely to obtain relief, according to a study published by the University of Pennsylvania.

“It’s very much a program that has been in the shadows,” Pistone explains. Pistone has heard from former students who’ve become accredited that some officers at USCIS—which conducts site visits for the R&A Program—have never heard of an accredited representative. “I’ve heard of judges who’ve never heard of an accredited rep,” she adds.


The Representation Crisis
In the removal proceedings court in Newark, as the afternoon session for hearings draws closer, a line of about a dozen people extends out the entryway of the courtroom into the hall. Some are dressed in immaculately pressed suits with manila envelopes containing paperwork they will need for court. Others wear jeans with translucent binders. Some carry children with them.

As the Clerk of Office begins to check people in at the door, the line continues to grow. “What’s your case number?,” she asks. “You have a lawyer?” Most repeat the same answer: “No.”

“We can fit another five,” the guard yells down the hall. The wooden bunches begin to fill up dangerously close to the courtroom’s maximum occupancy of 32 people.

As the “defendants” sort themselves among the wooden benches, they sit facing a seal above the judge’s desk with a bald eagle and an American flag. “QUI PRO DOMINA JUSTITIA SEQUITUR,” the inscription reads: “Attorney General who prosecutes on behalf of our Lady Justice.”

But justice is a foreign concept to those who sit in the courtroom. Over the next three hours the judge will hear some 40 odd cases. Only one case will have a lawyer physically present.

For every person who tells the judge they do not have a lawyer, the judge’s response is always the same: “I’m going to give you the list of lawyers who can represent you free or at low cost. You can choose to get one,” the judge responds. “I will give you another court date.” The judge’s gaze lowers. “Even if you cannot find a lawyer you have to come back to court or else you might be ordered removed.”

“You need to come back to this court on January 13, 2029 at 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon.”

There are currently 9 million immigration cases pending at USCIS, and 3 million at EOIR, Robyn Lieberman, Associate Director of the Migration and Refugee Protection Strategic Initiative Group, says. But as of October 2024, there are only 2,561 accredited representatives working at 875 recognized organizations, nationally.

“It’s an underutilized tool in the representation crisis,” Lieberman says. “The Program has been on the books since 1958,” she continues, “and there’s never been more than 2,500 at a time.”

“Most of the people who are coming will not have representation by a lawyer,” Julia Preston, who has covered immigration at the New York Times for over a decade, explains. “You’re looking at a process that, six years from now, you’re very likely to fail in court.”


The Waiting Game
To become an accredited representative, a prospective representative submits an application with their recognized organization to the DOJ. Rodriguez says, in all, her accreditation took about three months.

But when Rodriguez applied for accreditation, she had no idea how long the process would take. The DOJ provides no such information.

In 2022, backlogs for accredited representatives reached 12 to 18 months, according to Lieberman. “It is impossible for somebody to put their career on hold for that long,” Lieberman says. “It’s impossible for organizations to keep open cases that long.” In addition, funding for non-profit organizations often depends on quotas that measure how many cases they process.

“That’s basically shutting down the program,” Lieberman says.

While the processing time decreased to one to three months between February of 2023 and 2024, it has begun to increase again. In September, applications took six to eight months to process—double the three to four months it should be taking—according to Lieberman.

“There should be transparency on the website of how long you can expect to wait for your answer from DOJ,” Lieberman says.

But the review process itself has transparency issues as well. There are currently two immigration judges—removed from the bench for harassment—who are adjudicating R&A applications, according to Lieberman.

“These are two judges that have had multiple complaints,” she explains. “They are asking some very unusual questions,” she continues, “that we think are beyond the scope of the regulations.”


A Double Life
Between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. you can find Kimberly Betz at her office desk at Princeton University’s Center for Career Development with a plaque that reads, “Executive Director.” But during the evenings and weekends, her laptop used to reply to student emails turns into a forum for a different kind of work: she is an accredited representative.

“When I’m working on these cases, it’s easy to spend eight to ten hours on the weekend,” Batz says. “It might be three to twelve hours a week.”

Batz works at Arise, a Pittsburgh based non-profit, helping people file asylum claims and prepare for their proceedings. “There are no paid employees,” Batz explains. “Even, Jen,” she says referring to the founder, “there’s no money to pay her a salary at this point.” “She works out of her home.”

The organization has no office space: the website reads that the operations for Arise are fully remote. With the exception of one woman who is retired, all of Arise’s employees have full-time jobs outside of Arise.

Batz only has capacity to work on one case at a time and can only take on a single case for a year. “What we’re saying to people now is, if it takes, you know, three years before you hear anything back, you can come back to us and see if we can sort of fit you back in,” she says. “But we can’t stay on your case for beyond a year.”

With court backlogs at an all-time high, cases are rarely scheduled within the one-year timeline that Arise operates on.

Back in immigration court, the judge continues hearing cases. “Now that I have your application for asylum, I’m going to schedule you for a hearing,” the Newark immigration court judge tells a Haitian woman. “It’s going to be on May 4th, 2029 at 1:30 in the afternoon.”

“You can hire a lawyer at any time you wish.”

But asylum-seekers have much less agency than the immigration judge might lead them to believe. Manuel and Magda who filed for political asylum cannot afford a lawyer. “We were offered pro bono support but we would still have to pay some legal fees,” Magda says.

“They were charging $8,000, $10,000, $15,000,” Emanuel recalls. “We’re saving up,” Magda explains. “We’re waiting for the day that we have to get a lawyer.”

Manuel and Magda came to the U.S. from Colombia with their daughter in 2022. “We can’t go back to Colombia,” Magda says. “My father was a member of FARC.”

In 2016, a peace accord was negotiated between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)—the main paramilitary group in Colombia at the time, according to the U.S. Department of State. Around 13,000 combatants were disarmed.

Magda’s father was one of them.

“There’s a new armed group called Disidencias de las FARC and they’re going after people who chose to put down their arms—and their families,” Magda says.

Both of Magda’s parents are still in Colombia. “My father is under vigilance by a paramilitary group,” she says.

But even if Magda and Emanuel do find a lawyer, not all lawyers can be trusted. “Lawyers would tell us, ‘I’m pro bono, but the cost to start the paperwork is this much,’” Magda explains. “There have been cases where people have paid $7,000, and then they find out they’re getting deported because the lawyer hasn’t done anything.”

“We’re scared of getting scammed.”

Without legal representation Magda and Emanuel have been left to navigate a complex system alone. “What took the most amount of time was figuring out how to fill out the application,” Magda says, “so that what we wrote wouldn’t be used against us later.”

Filing the application is only half the battle. The court does not notify applicants if a court date has been moved. “We check on it every day,” Magda says. “They don’t tell you if your court date was changed. It’s your responsibility to check it,” Emanuel adds.

“Someone we knew had a court date in 2025,” Emanuel recalls. “They realized the week of their new hearing date that it had been moved to February of 2024,” he continues. “They got a deportation order.”

“The system is not set up to help them,” Batz explains.

“It both makes me angry and desperately sad,” she continues. “For me, this is the way I can do something that I feel like is making a difference in a positive way.”


No Contacts
Neither Magda nor Emanuel have heard of the R&A Program. Even if they had, there is no way for asylum seekers to directly contact an accredited representative. Despite the program’s goal to increase legal representation for low-income immigrants, EOIR only lists the telephone numbers of recognized organizations. Contact information for accredited representatives is entirely missing.

Lieberman calls it “the referral rejection loop.” “They get a name of an organization that can represent them, and then they pick up the phone, and they’re getting ‘This voicemail is full,’ or ‘Please don’t call us for another two weeks,’” she explains.

“How are people supposed to contact these organizations?,” Lieberman asks.

Rodriguez’s clients, who are survivors of domestic violence, may not have safe access to a phone inside their home, Rodriguez says.

The DOJ has the contact information of every accredited representative. “People apply with their emails, and they communicate with the DOJ by email,” Lieberman explains.

“This is a public program,” Pistone says. “Part of the purpose is for the public to contact these people.”

But Lieberman says the lack of data on accredited representatives is typical. There has been no comprehensive study of the R&A Program in the Program’s 66 year history. “There’s no basic data in the field at all,” Lieberman explains. “We have no idea how long the typical average stay is, or tenure is, for an accredited rep.”

In May of this year, Villanova University and CMS announced the first comprehensive audit of the R&A Program. The audit is being conducted through surveys that closed in October, according to Pistone.

With the new President-elect, however, the future of the R&A program remains uncertain. “The R&A Program is not established by law, it’s regulatory,” Matthew Lisecki, Senior Research & Policy Analyst at CMS, explains.

“It can be done away with just an executive action.”

Anxieties also exist for Lieberman. “I’m living in fear that if there is a Trump administration, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the DOJ office that does the accreditations,” says Lieberman.

“We’re going to have to fight like hell to keep the office open.”

For now, Manuel and Magda still don’t have a lawyer. They say they avoid thinking about what they will tell their nine-year-old daughter if their asylum application is denied. “Our daughter is old. She’s smart,” Manuel says. “If our asylum application is rejected, we can’t go back to Colombia.” He continues, “We’re just trying not to think about it.”

“FARC has branches in Panama, Venezuela, and Mexico,” Magda says. “They have alliances with cartels. Nowhere is really safe.”

Magda says that while the family waits, they try to lead a quiet “American” life. “All we can do at this moment is really focus on the asylum case.”

“All we can do in this moment is wait.”