Chicago immigration judge Shawn Abraham at center of dozens of deportation cases for abused, abandoned kids
An immigration judge in Chicago is at the center of dozens of deportations around the country that involve children who have been abused and abandoned.
CBS News Chicago first reported on Judge Shawn Abraham in August, because he had ordered Chicago area kids removed from the country that had all been abandoned, abused or neglected by one or both of their parents.
Thursday, we heard more children from around the country were being sent to his courtroom for the same type of hearing. We attended court in person, but the room was empty; just like last time, Judge Abraham appeared to talk to the children via video call. Many of them were not even tall enough to reach the microphone on camera.
"Our cases with kids are moving faster than almost any other cases that we have at the clinic," said Kirby Tyrrell, associate professor of law at Washburn Law School, who is also among those representing children in these hearings who have no one else to turn to.
Tyrrell was surprised because those kids that she and her colleagues represent, who already had ongoing cases in their home state of Kansas, were reassigned to Judge Abraham with only a few days' notice.
"I googled his name and your article about him came up," she said. "And that was really the most information I could find on him."
In August, he ordered any of the children on his docket removed from the country regardless of a state court designating them as abandoned, abused or neglected by their parents. It sparked backlash from local leaders.
"You remember how they explained it?" Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said at the time. "'We're going after the worst of the worst, the terrorists, the rapists, the murderers, the child predators, and we're going to once and forever remove them from America and make our streets safer.' I wish the people who made those statements could see what we saw this morning."
Thursday, CBS News Chicago sat in on a dozen cases involved children who appeared to be between 6 and 16 years old. One child had autism. There were several pairs of siblings.
Each of those cases were continued to a date one to two weeks from now.
"We went from having several months, to having an actual update to provide to the court in March, to now suddenly having a week," Tyrrell said.
Attorneys worry that on those next court dates, more children will be deported.
"Many of these kids, especially the kids who were there today, also have pending asylum applications and those applications argue that it would be dangerous to return to their home country," said Tyrrell.
No recording is allowed in court, even over video call, which is why CBS News Chicago could not show video of today's proceedings.
We have tried to track how many children have been deported in the last two years since President Trump took office and initiated his mass deportation plans. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security told our CBS News Data Team that they don't keep age-specific data on deportations.