By Dianne Solis | Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — Nearly all the nation’s busy immigration courts remained open through the week, despite calls by the immigration judges’ union to close the most crowded proceedings. But other federal agencies focused on immigrants have begun to take precautions to fight the spread of coronavirus. And advocates are intensifying calls for the release of immigrant detainees with health vulnerabilities.

“The president says ‘avoid crowding,’ “ tweeted the National Association of Immigration Judges. For non-detained immigrants, an arraignment-like proceeding known as the “master calendar” fits “the very definition of crowding,” the judges’ union said.

But late Friday night, the agency running the courts said most proceedings will continue with exceptions in six cities, all outside Texas, for the busy master calendar hearings.

“EOIR takes seriously the health of its employees and those with business before the immigration courts,” said a spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Department of Justice. “In recognition of the various stages of outbreak in the communities of each of our locations throughout the Nation, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution for our courts … As we continue to evaluate all of our locations, we will announce any changes, including reductions or extensions of timelines. “

The Associated Press first reported those cities as Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, Newark, New York City and Boston. Those six courts would remain open for other hearings, though, the court agency said. The Seattle immigration courts closed earlier this week when an employee had a positive COVID-19 exposure.

The Dallas immigration courts in the Earle Cabell Federal Building are often filled with so many people in the mornings for the arraignment-like proceeding that court benches fill and people stand or are asked to go to the hallway. There, families cluster in support of each other in legal fights over deportation.

There’s a backlog of 1.1 million cases in the nation’s 68 civil immigration courts.

As of last week, there are about 38,000 immigrants in ICE detention, according to ICE’s website. Around the nation, immigrant advocates are pushing for the release of detainees with health vulnerabilities, including those over 60, pregnant, with suppressed autoimmune systems or with heart or lung disease.

Such releases could happen under a process known as parole in the civil detention system.

“At this moment, we are exposing vulnerable immigrants to increased risk,” said Bill Holston, the executive director of the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas. “At a time where we are closing schools and even museums, we are placing people in great risk of an epidemic, and with a track record where we have not taken great care of the detained immigrants.”

Holston called for freeing those detainees over 50 years of age and to ensure that all those detained during the Covid-19 pandemic be able to attend their hearings and that contracting the virus not face negative impacts on their immigration cases.

Getting legal counsel is difficult for detained immigrants, the attorney said. “Illness will only make that even more challenging,” Holston said.

Nationally, social visits to detained immigrants at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were suspended because of the virus spread, ICE said.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, like other law enforcement agencies with a detained population, is taking important steps to further safeguard those in our care and as a precautionary measure, ICE is temporarily suspending social visitation in all of its detention facilities,” a Texas-based ICE spokesperson said in an email.

At CoreCivic Inc., one of the largest private operators of immigration detention centers, a spokeswoman said they would implement ICE’s “guidance.” LaSalle Corrections, which owns the Prairieland detention center in Alvarado, declined to comment on its visitors hours.

It was unclear whether many naturalization ceremonies conducted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, would continue. Two citizenship ceremonies, known as naturalizations, have been canceled until May 1 in the Dallas federal courts, a Dallas clerk said.