Judge pauses plan to speed children through an asylum system already denying 94 percent of claims

…(cont) All together now — the June tally from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is to say the administration's own immigration courts. Ninety-four percent of asylum claims decided that month were denied. The same analysis notes that the courts are plowing through asylum cases at an expeditious rate. Expeditious is their word. I have no improvement to offer on it.

So the memo a judge paused today was a plan to speed up a process that denies 94 percent of the claims it decides. I have reread that sentence several times looking for the part I got wrong.

Follow the calendar back from here. On October 16, immigrant advocacy groups sued to stop what they called a cruel and unlawful scheme to fast-track children's cases — fifteen days ago. Ten days before that, on October 6, in Boston, U.S. District Judge George O'Toole blocked a separate effort by the same administration: fining migrants up to $1.8 million apiece for failing to leave the country after a final order of deportation. The judge ruled the fines were imposed unlawfully, and wrote that the people facing them were in an economically precarious position. Up to $1.8 million, in a ruling you can read this afternoon.

That is the count, and the count is the story.

What neither ruling touched is the 94 percent. No court was asked to pause that, because a denial rate is not a memo; it is the result the memos were written to deliver faster. The children's interviews stop for now. The number they were being hurried toward was never under review.