TWO YEARS AGO, the Biden administration launched an initiative, known as the dedicated docket, to fast track the cases of certain asylum-seeking families, promising fairness and efficiency in the nation’s notoriously backlogged immigration courts. But as a report released this week reveals, the dedicated docket has sacrificed fairness for speed and quietly expedited injustice for thousands of asylum seekers, both here in Boston and nationally.

Families funneled into these fast-tracked proceedings are often on a fast track to deportation, without ever having their day in court. According to a Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program report, only 4 percent of completed cases on the Boston dedicated docket resulted in a grant of asylum. About a third of completed cases resulted in removal orders, and the vast majority—73 percent—were ordered removed in absentia, without the opportunity to appear in front of a judge. Some never even received notice of their hearing. Notably, children accounted for approximately 40 percent of these in absentia orders.

Advocates have repeatedly warned the Biden administration about due process violations on the dedicated docket, from the time of the docket’s launch in May 2021 to a letter sent to officials last year and then again this week. Many legal services organizations and law school clinical programs, like ours, are at capacity or can only take on a handful of new cases.

As a result, many families placed in these fast-track proceedings are left unrepresented. When the Biden administration launched the dedicated docket, it premised its avowals of fairness on the flawed assertion that the 11 selected cities had “established communities of legal service providers” that could “handle the cases.” Judges on the Boston dedicated docket typically instruct families without representation to seek assistance from a list of nine pro bono legal service providers in the greater Boston area, but as of March 2023, these nine organizations were taking very few, if any, new cases. Indeed, as our study shows, over 70 percent of asylum seekers on the Boston dedicated docket were forced to complete their cases without representation.

By law, immigrants have a right to legal representation in their immigration proceedings. But, unlike in the criminal justice system, the federal government generally does not appoint counsel for immigrants if they cannot afford representation. With legal service providers at capacity, families are left with only two options: either attempt to navigate the labyrinthine system on their own, often as non-native English speakers, or pay private attorneys thousands of dollars—up to $20,000 for expedited dedicated docket proceedings in Boston—to represent them.

Why does legal representation matter?

Studies have shown that immigrants with representation are more likely to apply for—and win—protection against deportation. On the Boston dedicated docket, no asylum seeker had successfully won protection without legal counsel as of August 2022. And the majority (61 percent) of those ordered removed were unrepresented.

Perhaps more important, without legal representation, many are unable to even apply for asylum, given the complexities of both the application form and the relevant law. As a national assessment of the dedicated docket highlighted, asylum applications were filed in only 6 percent of unrepresented cases on the dedicated docket nationally, as compared to in 86 percent of cases with representation.

What can be done?

The Biden administration should terminate the dedicated docket and expand access to counsel so that immigrants have a meaningful opportunity to be heard in court. Doing so is not just fundamentally fair, it’s also good politics. Most Americans recognize the importance of access to counsel and support the appointment of counsel in immigration proceedings.

The dedicated docket is just one of many, often insurmountable barriers, including the recent asylum ban, that asylum seekers face in accessing protection in the United States. Yet the right to seek asylum is well established under domestic and international law. The administration should take steps to safeguard that right, not undermine it. It is important to reaffirm our core obligation to protect individuals against return to persecution or torture. Ending these fast-track proceedings is critical to fulfilling that obligation.

Sabrineh Ardalan is the director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program and a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School. Tiffany Lieu is the Albert M. Sacks Clinical Teaching & Advocacy Fellow at the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program.