DOJ to close immigration courtroom in Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Anyone with an immigration case in western Pennsylvania will soon have to travel to Philadelphia for court.
The Department of Justice is shutting down the courtroom in Pittsburgh at the close of business Friday.
The notice from the DOJ was posted online a week ago, telling people that the court will no longer be holding hearings, creating another hurdle for hundreds of immigrants from the Pittsburgh area and West Virginia.
Laura Perkins, the emergency response organizer for Casa San Jose, told KDKA, "Already, access to courts is confusing and difficult. And people don't have attorneys."
Perkins said that the change will only make an already complicated court process worse, potentially raising the cost of attorney's fees due to the added travel expense, among other things.
"If they have to travel all the way to Philadelphia, we anticipate a lot of people getting deportation notices because of confusion and inability to travel," Perkins told KDKA.
As Mate Jurkovic, an associate Attorney at Goldstein & Associates, explained, there have been issues with the court in the past, but the Pittsburgh location was still an important resource.
"It's been plagued with technical issues. And unfortunately, there aren't immigration court reps there to handle those issues. So, it can be a real nightmare sometimes," said Jurkovic.
He hopes the courts will consider systemic changes to the immigration court system overall.
"It's littered with disfunction. It needs more attention. It needs more reform," said Jurkovic.
People who formally had their cases assigned to Pittsburgh can attend court virtually via WebEx instead of traveling to Philadelphia.
However, as Jurkovic explained, the program is not necessarily suitable for those not fluent in English and it's not a very intuitive software to use.
