Photo credit: Los Angeles Times
The Newark Immigration Court in the Peter W. Rodino Jr. Federal Building on Broad Street is a place where child cases are heard.
NJ Spotlight News reports that most of the children show up in court when their case is being heard. But the rate is greater for those who are represented by attorneys, according to a report from the American Immigration Council.
Newark Immigration Court operates under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Justice. The US Department of Homeland Security may send immigrants who illegally enter the US a “Notice to Appear,” giving them a date to argue their case in immigration court to stay in the country.
Children often face the uncertainty and fear of appearing in immigration court without an attorney, since they do not have the same right to a court-sponsored lawyer that US citizens do. There are attorneys that offer free legal services to children but waits can be long and the legal system can be difficult to navigate, especially for non-English speakers. Children who arrive in the country alone may not have the means to pay for a lawyer on their own.
The court had more than 216,000 total pending cases as of June, a number that has been growing since President Donald Trump took office. In March, there were 190,000 pending cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The court has the fourth largest backlog of any city It means longer waits for immigrants to receive humanitarian protections and find jobs working legally. The average number of days immigrants have to wait for their case to be heard after receiving a “Notice to Appear” from the Department of Homeland Security is 907.
The first few hearings are always short. Preliminary sessions last less than 15 minutes. Immigration judges frequently give the children additional time to find an attorney before returning to court for an individual hearing on their case. The judge shared a list of attorneys that offer free legal services to children whom they or their families can contact. The children, or their attorneys, make their case to the judge, often through an interpreter who translates between English and the children’s best language.
Out of 276,886 people involved in immigration cases in New Jersey from October 1997 to June 2026, only 125,556 were represented by lawyers, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The wait can be especially long for those seeking asylum, which is protection offered to immigrants who are already in the US but are scared to return to their home country for fear of persecution.
Immigrants who are under 21 and have been abandoned, abused or neglected by a parent can also apply for Special Immigrant Juvenile status. I they are approved, they can qualify for lawful permanent residency and get a green card, However, wait times are also long and the program has a cap on the number of visas that can be issued annually. It therefore means qualified people must wait years to get their green card.
