- The piece discusses the broken and dysfunctional state of immigration courts in the United States.
- The backlog of immigration cases has more than doubled since 2009, with over 600,000 cases currently backlogged.
- Many immigrants in these courts do not have access to legal representation, with only 37% having counsel.
- Undocumented children often have to represent themselves in court, which is deemed ridiculous and unfair.
- The success rate of cases varies significantly depending on the location of the court, with rates of deportation ranging from 24% to 90%.
- Immigration courts are part of the executive branch, making them subject to political priorities, which is currently under the control of Jeff Sessions.

- The immigration court system in the US is flawed and lacks independence.
- Jeff Sessions, who has power over immigration courts, could set precedents that make it harder for domestic violence victims to get asylum.
- The system is backlogged, lacks representation, and has judges without full independence, leading to unjust decisions.
- Examples are given of a woman from Honduras who was deported and later assaulted by the gang she fled, and a Mexican police officer who was deported and subsequently killed.
- Sessions wants to hire more judges, but also wants them to move faster and scrutinize asylum claims, which may not be the right approach.
- The courts need big changes, ideally becoming fully independent from the Department of Justice.
- The most urgent problem is that children, and nobody in general, should have to represent themselves in court.
- A satirical courtroom show is used as an example to illustrate the absurdity of the current system.

America’s dysfunctional immigration court system forces many children to appear in court alone. That’s as ridiculous in real life as it would be on a courtroom television show.

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You know, the place where millions of Americans end up every year after making a large squirrel shit-talk the CEO of a coal company.

Now, courts aren't just the center of our judicial system.

You're watching The Verdict with Judge Hatchett.

I know, because I'm not stupid, that you're a liar then, and you're a liar now.

Now, I know that looks like a fun episode of Hot Bench, but you should know that cute dog actually confessed to murdering 14 people in the Pacific Northwest, so it's not quite as fun as they just made it look.

But tonight, we're gonna focus on a type of justice that you don't get to watch on TV, and it concerns immigration courts.

They're 1 of those things that you may not know much about, but are actually hugely important to a significant number of people, like Gefilte Fish, or the insane clown posse.

Now, in recent months, you may have seen multiple stories of ICE agents raiding workplaces and hauling people away.

And while those stories are horrifying and grab all the attention, the place many of those people end up, immigration courts, are no less troubling.

There are around 60 of them all over the country, and hundreds of thousands of people go through them every year, pleading their case against deportation.

So they are hugely consequential, and the stakes in these cases can be incredibly high, as 1 girl awaiting a hearing can attest.

They're gonna kill me and they're gonna kill my family.

Because no child should have to worry about whether they're going to be murdered.

The biggest thing they should be worrying about are whether they can sit with the cool kids while they eat their Tide Pods, and how they can please Slender Man.

And that last 1 is obviously ridiculous, because remember, kids, Slender Man already loves you just the way you are.

So, this is a critical, potentially life and death process.

Take that from multiple current and former immigration court judges.

I think most people would be incredulous at what really happens in immigration court and what sometimes passes for due process.

In essence, we're doing death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.

That is something we probably shouldn't be doing in a place that we definitely shouldn't be doing it.

Like having a cock fight in an emergency room.

Or doing coke in a Build-A-Bear workshop.

It's a crazy idea, it gets stuck in the bear's hair, it's completely inefficient.

Well, let's start with the fact that a surge in immigration from Central America, ramped up immigration enforcement, and a glacial rate of hiring judges have combined to create a truly massive backlog of cases.

More than 617,000 immigration cases are now backlogged.

That number has more than doubled since 2009.

It's as if they have forgotten us, as Andres, 1 of the Guatemalan immigrants waiting for his hearing in San Francisco, where the average wait time is 3 years.

In Miami, the wait is about a year and a half, and it's much worse in cities like San Antonio, Atlanta, and Chicago.

The estimated wait time in Chicago is 5 years.

And if you are stuck in that line, that's not good for your case, because evidence for your claim can become stale, and witnesses who could help you can disappear or die.

And yet, over 600,000 cases have piled up endlessly, like Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons, New Yorker magazines, and DVR episodes of Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary.

Yeah, I know it's good, but I'm just never in the mood, and I never, ever will be.

But the issues go much deeper than just long wait times.

Because while immigration courts have the trappings of a criminal court, you can wind up there from an arrest, you can be detained, awaiting your hearing, and you're arguing against the government.

They're actually civil courts, because this is not a criminal trial.

Their only task is deciding whether or not you can stay in the country.

So a lot of things that you might assume someone in these courts would have access to, they don't.

Unlike criminal court, an immigration court, the federal government is not required to provide lawyers to defendants who cannot afford them.

If you can't afford a lawyer, you have to defend yourself, which is clearly a terrible idea.

Think of an immigration hearing like surgery.

You can try and do it yourself, but if you ever want to see your fucking family again, maybe try and Get a professional to help you.

And troublingly, only 37% of immigrants in these courts have counsel, meaning the majority of them are appearing in front of a judge without a lawyer.

Many of the undocumented children that walk into the immigration courthouse don't have an attorney and must represent themselves.

There's children from 2 years old to 17 years old who are appearing by themselves, who are sitting there without a clue about what's happening.

That's just clearly ridiculous, because you cannot let a two-year-old be unsupervised in court.

You can't even let a two-year-old be unsupervised in a bouncy castle.

They're gonna come out covered in glitter, holding a broken beer bottle and a dead bird.

The point is, they can't be left alone for a second, and that bird has already been in their mouth.

And while sending kids into court without representation might seem crazy to you, amazingly, Some judges are apparently fine with it, because when a lawsuit was filed arguing all kids need lawyers, Jack Weil, an assistant chief immigration judge, suggested that's not necessarily the case.

I've taught immigration law, literally, to three-year-olds and four-year-olds.

It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of patience.

It's not the most efficient, but it can be done.

You can't teach immigration law to a three-year-old.

You can't even explain to a child that age that Elmo isn't his best friend.

Elmo's not only a puppet, he's a celebrity.

Your relationship is completely asymmetrical.

1 immigration lawyer actually put Judge Weill's whole three-year-old's theory to the test in what is perhaps the single greatest mock trial ever recorded.

And do you speak English as your native language?

I play to tie you with fairies, to tie you on the green and to teach you

can go ahead and represent yourself in immigration court to determine your nationality?

She knows all the most important legal principles.

If I light my balloon, you mustn't deport soon, and if I place a tie of a fairy, so get with AAAAAAAAA...

That lawyer actually did a series of videos with kids, and they are all great, but my favorite is this 1.

If you were removed, would you like to designate a country of removal?

You laugh now, but it won't be so cute when that girl is deported back to Papa John's, because it's technically pizza, and that is exactly why these children need lawyers.

But the truth is, whether you have a lawyer or not, your odds of success to a frightening degree may be dictated by where you are.

In San Francisco, immigrants are deported in 36 percent of cases.

In Charlotte, the number jumps to 84 percent.

In New York City, only 24 percent of cases result in deportation.

In Atlanta, the rate is almost 90 percent.

And look, while the merits of every case are different, that is an alarming disparity between courts.

Normally, the only thing that should vary that much by region is the rate of Jeff Dunham fans per capita.

And regardless of where you are, in either case, that number should never be as high as 90 percent.

And the final quirk of this system is that immigration courts are not nearly as independent as they should be.

Because while you might assume that they'd be part of the judicial branch, immigration courts are actually part of the executive branch.

Specifically, they're run by the DOJ, making them subject to shifting political priorities.

So, for instance, right now, the boss of all these judges is this man, Jeff Sessions, the only cabinet member allowed to fly as a lap infant on a domestic flight.

And he has made it pretty clear what his priorities are.

For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this country, be forewarned, this is a new era.

You know, it's a very specific type of person who grins when saying the words, the Trump era.

It's basically people with Trump's name, people with Trump's hats, and the 1 person in America still getting a kick out of Kefefe.

Hey, I don't agree with everything the guy says, but boy, we had some laughs, because it's not a word.

And Sessions, The thing is, Sessions has a weird amount of power over immigration courts.

He can refer cases to himself, which basically means stepping in and personally reviewing decisions.

He actually picked up a case recently concerning a woman deemed eligible for asylum over a year ago based on domestic violence that she suffered for years under her ex-husband in El Salvador.

Now, if he overturns that decision, not only could that woman be deported, but he could also set precedents, making it harder for other domestic violence victims to get asylum.

And while Sessions isn't the exact last person I'd want to set precedence on domestic violence, he's pretty near the bottom of that list.

And if you don't know what that last 1 is referring to, just Google Mr.

Honestly, I have no idea what you'll find, but give it a try, we might all be surprised.

The point here is, when you combine all of these factors, backlogged courts, lack of representation, and judges without full independence, you can have cases that don't even seem to resemble justice.

For example, a few months ago, the New Yorker told the story of a woman from Honduras who asked them to identify her as Elena.

MS-13 killed 2 of her brothers and shot her sister.

She fled to America and turned herself in to Border Patrol.

Now, DHS said that she didn't qualify for asylum because she couldn't prove credible fear of violence back home.

So, she appealed, requesting a hearing with an immigration judge.

And I'm about to play that hearing for you in its entirety.

I have read what the asylum officer wrote.

He told the asylum officer that some gang member became infatuated with you, wanted you to be with him, wanted you to open a bank account so the criminal proceeds from the gang could be placed there, and you refused.

Did you move to any other city in Honduras before coming to the United States?

The government of the United States doesn't afford you protection for this type of reason.

And thanks to that hearing, Elena was deported back to Honduras, where she was assaulted at gunpoint by the gang member she had fled, because it turned out her fear was pretty fucking credible.

Now, we trimmed the parts in that where a translator interprets between her and the judge, but even keeping all of that in, the full hearing lasted 1 minute and 43 seconds.

For context, that hot bench episode you saw at the start, where the dog had written a confession, was 8 minutes long, and we counted 32 questions.

There should have been only 1 question there.

How the fuck did that dog write this letter?

-♪ ♪ -♪ And in some cases, deportations do turn out to be a death sentence.

Take Constantino Morales, a Mexican police officer who was targeted by a drug cartel.

And ended up in immigration court in Nebraska.

He couldn't afford an attorney, so he represented himself in court before a judge who opts to deport 84% of the time.

Morales lost his case and filmed this message after that decision.

My request was denied, but you have to fight to the end.

He was deported back to Mexico, and 6 months and 29 days after that decision, he was killed.

And that is fucking heartbreaking, obviously.

So the question really is, how can it be fixed?

Sessions has said that he wants to hire more judges, which the system does need.

But, he's also said that he wants the judges to move faster, and advocated for increased scrutiny of what he calls fake asylum claims.

Which does seem like the wrong approach, because immigration courts are a lot like sex.

The way to improve them is rarely to say, hey, let's do it a lot faster and meaner, and let's have Jeff Sessions overseeing the whole thing.

But the truth, the truth here is, we are going to need big changes.

Ideally, the biggest change would be to make the courts fully independent from the DOJ, which is something that can't happen overnight or under this particular Congress, probably at all.

But at the very least, we should absolutely fix the stupidest problem of all, which is that nobody, particularly children, should have to represent themselves in these courts because children do not understand the law.

Having them alone in a courtroom is a terrible idea, and to prove it to you, I give you The stupidest new court show imaginable.

You've seen a lot of courtroom shows, but you've never seen 1 like this.

In this courtroom, everyone is 3 or 4 years old.

And in this week's episode, this arsonist is in the hot seat.

He's got the best legal advice a three-year-old can give.

What's the difference between a banana and a cow?


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Courts. You know, the place where millions of Americans end up every year after making a large squirrel shit-talk the CEO of a coal company. We've all been there. We've all been there, right? Now, courts aren't just the center of our judicial system.

They are the backbone of daytime TV.

Speaker 1: A college student brings his mommy. Judge Judy...

Speaker 2: Don't get me preaching up in here today.

Speaker 3: You're watching The Verdict with Judge Hatchett.

Speaker 1: A show that's making a difference.

Speaker 4: You need to be sober 7 days a week.

Speaker 1: Paternity Court.

Speaker 2: I know, because I'm not stupid, that you're a liar then, and you're a liar now.

Speaker 1: Oh! The People's Court.

Speaker 0: A pack of dogs draw blood.

Speaker 5: This is

Speaker 4: a confession. This is a note by the dog. P.S.

Speaker 6: I've had all my shots. Hey!

Speaker 0: Hot Bench. Now, I know that looks like a fun episode of Hot Bench, but you should know that cute dog actually confessed to murdering 14 people in the Pacific Northwest, so it's not quite as fun as they just made it look. But tonight, we're gonna focus on a type of justice that you don't get to watch on TV, and it concerns immigration courts. They're 1 of those things that you may not know much about, but are actually hugely important to a significant number of people, like Gefilte Fish, or the insane clown posse. Now, in recent months, you may have seen multiple stories of ICE agents raiding workplaces and hauling people away.

And while those stories are horrifying and grab all the attention, the place many of those people end up, immigration courts, are no less troubling. There are around 60 of them all over the country, and hundreds of thousands of people go through them every year, pleading their case against deportation. So they are hugely consequential, and the stakes in these cases can be incredibly high, as 1 girl awaiting a hearing can attest.

Speaker 2: What would happen if we sent you home?

Speaker 5: They're gonna kill me. They're gonna kill me and they're gonna kill my family.

Speaker 0: That's horrible. Because no child should have to worry about whether they're going to be murdered. The biggest thing they should be worrying about are whether they can sit with the cool kids while they eat their Tide Pods, and how they can please Slender Man. And that last 1 is obviously ridiculous, because remember, kids, Slender Man already loves you just the way you are. So, this is a critical, potentially life and death process.

Sadly, the system is a complete mess. And don't take that from me. Take that from multiple current and former immigration court judges.

Speaker 7: I think most people would be incredulous at what really happens in immigration court and what sometimes passes for due process.

Speaker 2: Our courts today are dysfunctional. In essence, we're doing death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.

Speaker 0: Death penalty cases in traffic court. That is something we probably shouldn't be doing in a place that we definitely shouldn't be doing it. Like having a cock fight in an emergency room. Or doing coke in a Build-A-Bear workshop. It's a crazy idea, it gets stuck in the bear's hair, it's completely inefficient.

So, how did this system get so broken? Well, let's start with the fact that a surge in immigration from Central America, ramped up immigration enforcement, and a glacial rate of hiring judges have combined to create a truly massive backlog of cases.

Speaker 4: More than 617,000 immigration cases are now backlogged. That number has more than doubled since 2009. It's as if they have forgotten us, as Andres, 1 of the Guatemalan immigrants waiting for his hearing in San Francisco, where the average wait time is 3 years. In Miami, the wait is about a year and a half, and it's much worse in cities like San Antonio, Atlanta, and Chicago.

Speaker 0: That's true. The estimated wait time in Chicago is 5 years. And if you are stuck in that line, that's not good for your case, because evidence for your claim can become stale, and witnesses who could help you can disappear or die. And yet, over 600,000 cases have piled up endlessly, like Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons, New Yorker magazines, and DVR episodes of Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary. Yeah, I know it's good, but I'm just never in the mood, and I never, ever will be.

Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. But the issues go much deeper than just long wait times.

Because while immigration courts have the trappings of a criminal court, you can wind up there from an arrest, you can be detained, awaiting your hearing, and you're arguing against the government. They're actually civil courts, because this is not a criminal trial. Their only task is deciding whether or not you can stay in the country. That's it. So a lot of things that you might assume someone in these courts would have access to, they don't.

And the first big 1 is this.

Speaker 8: Unlike criminal court, an immigration court, the federal government is not required to provide lawyers to defendants who cannot afford them.

Speaker 0: Exactly. If you can't afford a lawyer, you have to defend yourself, which is clearly a terrible idea. Think of an immigration hearing like surgery. You can try and do it yourself, but if you ever want to see your fucking family again, maybe try and Get a professional to help you. And troublingly, only 37% of immigrants in these courts have counsel, meaning the majority of them are appearing in front of a judge without a lawyer.

And some in particular really need 1.

Speaker 8: Many of the undocumented children that walk into the immigration courthouse don't have an attorney and must represent themselves.

Speaker 2: There's children from 2 years old to 17 years old who are appearing by themselves, who are sitting there without a clue about what's happening.

Speaker 0: That's just clearly ridiculous, because you cannot let a two-year-old be unsupervised in court. You can't even let a two-year-old be unsupervised in a bouncy castle. They're gonna come out covered in glitter, holding a broken beer bottle and a dead bird. How did they get them in there? Who knows?

The point is, they can't be left alone for a second, and that bird has already been in their mouth. It just has. You have to deal with that reality. And while sending kids into court without representation might seem crazy to you, amazingly, Some judges are apparently fine with it, because when a lawsuit was filed arguing all kids need lawyers, Jack Weil, an assistant chief immigration judge, suggested that's not necessarily the case.

Speaker 2: I've taught immigration law, literally, to three-year-olds and four-year-olds. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of patience. They get it. It's not the most efficient, but it can be done.

Speaker 0: No, it can't! You can't teach immigration law to a three-year-old. You can't even explain to a child that age that Elmo isn't his best friend. Elmo's not only a puppet, he's a celebrity. He's never even heard of you.

Your relationship is completely asymmetrical. 1 immigration lawyer actually put Judge Weill's whole three-year-old's theory to the test in what is perhaps the single greatest mock trial ever recorded.

Speaker 6: And do you speak English as your native language?

Speaker 5: Yeah, I like my balloon.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 6: I like your balloon, too. What is your best language?

Speaker 5: I play to tie you with fairies, to tie you on the green and to teach you

Speaker 6: on the blue. Where were you born?

Speaker 5: IIIIIIII, it's with Mommy and teach. So do you feel like you

Speaker 6: can go ahead and represent yourself in immigration court to determine your nationality? Uh-huh. Oh, right. Are you excited to do it?

Speaker 5: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Speaker 0: Well, of course she's excited. She knows all the most important legal principles. If I light my balloon, you mustn't deport soon, and if I place a tie of a fairy, so get with AAAAAAAAA... And... And...

Asylum. Yes. That... That lawyer actually did a series of videos with kids, and they are all great, but my favorite is this 1.

Speaker 6: If you were removed, would you like to designate a country of removal? Yeah. Okay, what country would that be?

Speaker 5: Pizza.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Pizza. -♪ Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Speaker 0: ♪ -♪

Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 0: yeah Yeah. Oh, yeah. You laugh now, but it won't be so cute when that girl is deported back to Papa John's, because it's technically pizza, and that is exactly why these children need lawyers. But the truth is, whether you have a lawyer or not, your odds of success to a frightening degree may be dictated by where you are.

Speaker 9: In San Francisco, immigrants are deported in 36 percent of cases. In Charlotte, the number jumps to 84 percent. In New York City, only 24 percent of cases result in deportation. In Atlanta, the rate is almost 90 percent.

Speaker 0: And look, while the merits of every case are different, that is an alarming disparity between courts. Normally, the only thing that should vary that much by region is the rate of Jeff Dunham fans per capita. And regardless of where you are, in either case, that number should never be as high as 90 percent. And the final quirk of this system is that immigration courts are not nearly as independent as they should be. Because while you might assume that they'd be part of the judicial branch, immigration courts are actually part of the executive branch.

Specifically, they're run by the DOJ, making them subject to shifting political priorities. So, for instance, right now, the boss of all these judges is this man, Jeff Sessions, the only cabinet member allowed to fly as a lap infant on a domestic flight. And he has made it pretty clear what his priorities are.

Speaker 10: For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this country, be forewarned, this is a new era. This is the Trump era.

Speaker 0: You know, it's a very specific type of person who grins when saying the words, the Trump era. It's basically people with Trump's name, people with Trump's hats, and the 1 person in America still getting a kick out of Kefefe. Hey, I don't agree with everything the guy says, but boy, we had some laughs, because it's not a word. Cacophé's not a word. That's why it's funny.

That's... Oh, it's priceless. And Sessions, The thing is, Sessions has a weird amount of power over immigration courts. He can refer cases to himself, which basically means stepping in and personally reviewing decisions. He actually picked up a case recently concerning a woman deemed eligible for asylum over a year ago based on domestic violence that she suffered for years under her ex-husband in El Salvador.

Now, if he overturns that decision, not only could that woman be deported, but he could also set precedents, making it harder for other domestic violence victims to get asylum. And while Sessions isn't the exact last person I'd want to set precedence on domestic violence, he's pretty near the bottom of that list. Right before O.J. Simpson, Johnny Depp, and Mr. Peanut.

And if you don't know what that last 1 is referring to, just Google Mr. Peanut domestic violence. Honestly, I have no idea what you'll find, but give it a try, we might all be surprised. The point here is, when you combine all of these factors, backlogged courts, lack of representation, and judges without full independence, you can have cases that don't even seem to resemble justice. For example, a few months ago, the New Yorker told the story of a woman from Honduras who asked them to identify her as Elena.

MS-13 killed 2 of her brothers and shot her sister. She fled to America and turned herself in to Border Patrol. Now, DHS said that she didn't qualify for asylum because she couldn't prove credible fear of violence back home. So, she appealed, requesting a hearing with an immigration judge. And I'm about to play that hearing for you in its entirety.

Seriously, this is the whole thing.

Speaker 11: I have read what the asylum officer wrote. He told the asylum officer that some gang member became infatuated with you, wanted you to be with him, wanted you to open a bank account so the criminal proceeds from the gang could be placed there, and you refused.

Speaker 6: Yes. I said no.

Speaker 11: Did you move to any other city in Honduras before coming to the United States? No. The government of the United States doesn't afford you protection for this type of reason. I affirm the asylum officer's decision.

Speaker 0: That was it. Did you move? No? Okay, goodbye. And thanks to that hearing, Elena was deported back to Honduras, where she was assaulted at gunpoint by the gang member she had fled, because it turned out her fear was pretty fucking credible.

Now, we trimmed the parts in that where a translator interprets between her and the judge, but even keeping all of that in, the full hearing lasted 1 minute and 43 seconds. There were only 2 questions. For context, that hot bench episode you saw at the start, where the dog had written a confession, was 8 minutes long, and we counted 32 questions. Which is absurd. There should have been only 1 question there.

How the fuck did that dog write this letter? Case dismissed! -♪ ♪ -♪ And in some cases, deportations do turn out to be a death sentence. Take Constantino Morales, a Mexican police officer who was targeted by a drug cartel. He fled to the U.S.

And ended up in immigration court in Nebraska. He couldn't afford an attorney, so he represented himself in court before a judge who opts to deport 84% of the time. Morales lost his case and filmed this message after that decision.

Speaker 3: I'm being deported. They are deporting me. It was 4 years of fighting. My request was denied, but you have to fight to the end. Don't be scared.

No worries. Life goes on.

Speaker 0: He was deported back to Mexico, and 6 months and 29 days after that decision, he was killed. And that is fucking heartbreaking, obviously. So clearly, this whole system is broken. So the question really is, how can it be fixed? Sessions has said that he wants to hire more judges, which the system does need.

But, he's also said that he wants the judges to move faster, and advocated for increased scrutiny of what he calls fake asylum claims. Which does seem like the wrong approach, because immigration courts are a lot like sex. The way to improve them is rarely to say, hey, let's do it a lot faster and meaner, and let's have Jeff Sessions overseeing the whole thing. -... But the truth, the truth here is, we are going to need big changes.

Ideally, the biggest change would be to make the courts fully independent from the DOJ, which is something that can't happen overnight or under this particular Congress, probably at all. But at the very least, we should absolutely fix the stupidest problem of all, which is that nobody, particularly children, should have to represent themselves in these courts because children do not understand the law. Having them alone in a courtroom is a terrible idea, and to prove it to you, I give you The stupidest new court show imaginable.

Speaker 1: You've seen a lot of courtroom shows, but you've never seen 1 like this.

Speaker 0: -♪♪

Speaker 3: Order!

Speaker 1: That's right. In this courtroom, everyone is 3 or 4 years old.

Speaker 5: My favorite food is mango.

Speaker 0: -♪♪

Speaker 1: Everyone that is, except the defendant.

Speaker 12: What the fuck is this? Is this a joke?

Speaker 1: Nope. This is Todd Bench. And in this week's episode, this arsonist is in the hot seat.

Speaker 5: You're a bad! Bad, bad, bad!

Speaker 12: Seriously? Bad, bad,

Speaker 5: bad, bad, bad! Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty!

Speaker 12: Object. Huh? Just object. Object!

Speaker 5: I object to you! I object to you!

Speaker 12: It's object. Not the bat.

Speaker 1: He's got the best legal advice a three-year-old can give.

Speaker 5: The difference

Speaker 3: between A

Speaker 5: banana and a cow.

Speaker 12: What's the difference between a banana and a cow? I don't know. What?

Speaker 5: A banana and a yellow. LAUGHTER

Speaker 1: Todd Bench has everything. A bailiff. A stenographer.

Speaker 12: Do you even know my name?

Speaker 5: David Schwimmer.

Speaker 12: How do you even know who David Schwimmer is?

Speaker 5: Hacksaw Ridge.

Speaker 12: David Schwimmer was not even in Hacksaw Ridge. Okay, the stenographer's leaving now.

Speaker 1: A courtroom artist.

Speaker 12: Oh, so there's a sketch artist now? Great. Sure she's terrible. Holy shit, that's so good.

Speaker 1: And of course, Judge Riley.

Speaker 12: How did you become a judge?

Speaker 5: I believed in myself to be a judge.

Speaker 12: How long have you been doing this?

Speaker 5: 14 years.

Speaker 3: You've been

Speaker 12: doing this for 14 years, but you're 4?

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 1: It's a case with twists and turns.

Speaker 12: There was another judge. What happened to her?

Speaker 5: She wet her pants.

Speaker 1: And snacks. So many snacks.

Speaker 12: Will anyone share their snacks with me?

Speaker 1: No! You'll even see a lawyer turn on his own client.

Speaker 12: You please just tell them that I didn't burn down the hospital.

Speaker 5: You burned down the hospital.

Speaker 12: No, no,

Speaker 3: it's not

Speaker 5: that I did. Quiet.

Speaker 12: Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 5: You did burn down the hospital.

Speaker 12: Oh, I didn't burn...

Speaker 5: You burned down the hospital.

Speaker 12: You know what? I am guilty, all right? There you go. I'm guilty. Goddamn, this small...

Speaker 1: Todd Betch. Is it stupid? Sure. But is it any dumber than how America's immigration courts are run? Barely.

Speaker 12: The judge sentenced me to a jillion years. I mean, a jillion is not even a number. I mean, this whole... Who threw that? Tudbeck.

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Immigration Courts: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)