No names, please
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Inside a federal immigration courtroom in New York City last month, a judge took an exceedingly unusual step: declining to state the name of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney pressing to deport asylum seekers.
“We’re not really doing names publicly,” said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. It was the first of two separate instances The Intercept identified in which judges chose to withhold the identities of the attorneys representing the Trump administration’s deportation regime.
As ICE agents across the country wear masks to raid workplaces and detain immigrants, government attorneys need not cover their faces to shield their identities. Legal experts who spoke to The Intercept agreed the practice of concealing the lawyers’ identities was both novel and concerning.
“I’ve never heard of someone in open court not being identified,” said Elissa Steglich, a law professor and co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin. “Part of the court’s ethical obligation is transparency, including clear identification of the parties. Not identifying an attorney for the government means if there are unethical or professional concerns regarding [the Department of Homeland Security], the individual cannot be held accountable. And it makes the judge appear partial to the government.”
“Part of the court’s ethical obligation is transparency, including clear identification of the parties.”
The concealment shocked two lawyers who were representing immigrants in Xu’s courtroom. Attorney Jeffrey Okun, who was representing a client via video call, characterized the move as “bizarre.” Attorney Hugo Gonzalez Venegas called Xu’s behavior “a terrible lack of transparency on the part of officers of the court.”
From The Intercept:
