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By Everard Meade & Mary Meg McCarthy5:55 p.m.Sept. 4, 2014

Sensible, bipartisan immigration reform isnt dead. But if we dont get back to basic constitutional principles, it will drown in cultural politics.

Throughout the Cold War, federal judges of all different stripes blasted the summary and/or arbitrary detention and deportation of noncitizens. They accused the government of trampling the Constitution. Many cited the battle for hearts and minds and the reign of arbitrary imprisonment behind the Iron Curtain.

With less chest-thumping, the federal courts have continued to issue blistering rebukes of U.S. immigration courts and law enforcement, calling upon them to mind the process and the facts of a particular case, not its presumed policy implications.

But the vast majority of immigration claims in the United States are not reviewed by the federal courts. They are litigated and decided entirely within the executive branch, and they are subject to very little public or judicial scrutiny.

Immigrants do not have a right to court-appointed counsel. They are often detained in remote jails, far from family, social, and legal support. If they win relief, the government can appeal, and the attorney general can overrule the Board of Immigration Appeals.

The immigration court system is totally overwhelmed. The current backlog stands at 375,000 cases. This translates into waits of five or more years for a hearing, and a bureaucracy in which many individuals simply get lost.

We spend $18 billion per year on immigration enforcement, but only $360 million on the adjudicatory system. Only 263 immigration judges serve our nation of immigrants.

Casual observers assume that immigration status is more or less obvious. They imagine a person captured by the Border Patrol while sneaking through the desert and wonder why they need much of a hearing.

People in these situations are summarily returned every day. But, in most cases, the circumstances are more complex.

The rest is here:
Fairness should be focus of bipartisan immigration reform