(Thread) Deportation defense in the age of Trump / COVID-19 / post office shenanigans / patriarchy: client is pregnant, due just 3 weeks after her asylum trial, so I filed a request to postpone her trial until kiddo is at least 5 months old since mama has to travel to court.

2/ I have online access to my court calendar, but not the judge's actual decision, because COVID postponed our court's adoption of the online filing system. Saw my date was postponed... by only two months. Client's baby will be 5 weeks at time of new trial.

3/ Called the court to ask - was this just docket shuffling, or did the judge really grant my request but only postpone it by a few weeks? Sure enough, this was the "grant" of my request to postpone trial -- which, by the way, the ICE attorney stated he did not oppose.

4/ I must file a second request to postpone, since 5 weeks postpartum, in a pandemic, is not acceptable for mama to have a 3-5 hour asylum trial. But mail from our court is taking 3-8+ weeks to go three miles to my office due to COVID understaffing at court & USPS shenanigans.

5/ I'm still missing judge's orders that were granted in June and July. So I ask the clerk, could you please email or fax me a copy of the judge's order, or tell me what it says, so that I can take that into account when filing my second request? No.

6/ I can send a written request, with a return FedEx envelope. In normal times our clerks process these very promptly (thank you!!!) but these days they are understaffed & overworked due to COVID and these requests take over a month, not even counting mail delay.

7/ So in sum: a brand new immigration judge thinks that he has "helped" my client by postponing her asylum trial to 3 weeks before birth to 5 weeks after. I have to respond, but I can't even tell what the judge wrote, because I can't get a copy in time to respond.

8/ How can I meaningfully represent my client without prompt access to her court records? And how can a man tell a woman that she must testify for hours about traumatic topics, in the midst of postpartum brainfog and sleep deprivation and physical recovery and breastfeeding?

9/ Maybe, giving the new judge benefit of the doubt, his order says something like "this is a placeholder date while we shuffle dockets, I see that you asked for March 2021 and DHS agreed, we'll do that as soon as we can, hold tight." But I don't know bc I can't see the order!!