Colorado has 78,000 immigration cases pending — and the worst rate of attorney representation in the nation

A family from Venezuela is gathered around a security guard on the eighth-floor hallway of the federal courthouse, bombarding him with questions in Spanish. 

They are fighting to stay in the United States and just emerged from Courtroom F — one of six immigration courtrooms at the federal building in downtown Denver — where they faced the judge who will eventually decide whether to grant them legal status in this country or order their deportation.

It is a process that will take years. 

“Nos vemos en 2026, marzo,” the security guard, Officer Derek Fields, tells the family after explaining in the best Spanish he can that their next court date is in March 2026, that it’s normal to wait that long, and that they are free to go until then.

Fields taught himself Spanish, mostly from YouTube, so he could help the hundreds of native speakers who show up each week at the Byron G. Rogers Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, nervous and confused. 

He helps them figure out which of the nine immigration judges they are assigned and how to find the change-of-venue forms if their future proceedings are scheduled in Miami or Chicago or Los Angeles instead of Denver. He also answers a barrage of questions entirely unrelated to court, including “Is my kid allowed to go to school?”

“Gracias a Dios! Ud. habla español!” a man exclaims to Fields in the chaotic hallway outside the courtrooms. Around them, people are asking pro-bono attorneys at a nonprofit organization’s help desk what they should do after walking into their hearings. Others are lined up at a help window to file asylum applications. Every weekday morning and afternoon, a line of new immigrants winds through the courthouse’s sunlit lobby and through the security entrance.

In the past three years, the backlog at federal immigration court in Denver — which serves the entire state — has more than quadrupled, now at more than 77,500 pending cases for immigrants who have filed for asylum or are otherwise fighting “removal proceedings” to deport them to their home countries. That’s up from 18,000 pending cases in 2021. 

Nearly 31,000 of the currently pending cases are for Venezuelans, who have fled their country in record numbers, arriving in Denver by the busload throughout 2022 and 2023 after traveling months on foot and via train through Colombia, Central America and to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. 

The U.S. Department of Justice now has nine immigration judges assigned to the courthouse in Denver and three at the detention center in Aurora, up from only a handful a decade ago. 

Colorado, meanwhile, ranks last in the nation in the percentage of people who have attorneys as they face a complex immigration court system that will determine the outcome of the rest of their lives. About 85% of immigrants in Colorado go through the system “pro se,” meaning they are representing themselves. 

Not having lawyers present in the courtroom contributes to the backlog as judges go out of their way to make sure people understand their rights and extend cases for years so people have enough time to submit evidence, argue immigration experts. At the same time, immigration is such a polarizing issue nationally, and one in which the rules can change overnight depending on who is president and who is U.S. attorney general, that cases are disrupted midway through the process. 

“The reason we have so much backlog is because people are confused as hell,” said Violeta Chapin, an associate dean and head of an immigration law clinic at the University of Colorado. “If you had lawyers there, they would streamline and make it more efficient — someone to tell them honestly, ‘You have no way to stay, or you potentially do.’ 

“Right now, immigration is stuck in this space with this unmanageable number of cases. For the judges, you have this ridiculous docket and you are a pawn of the attorney general. We need defenders for these immigrants because it is a shitshow without.”

“It’s a long time from now”

Eduardo and Crisbelys Lugo, dressed neatly and shaking with nerves, sit at a table facing immigration Judge Ivan Gardzelewski. They are the third consecutive family to appear in his courtroom without an attorney on a summer morning. Their 2-year-old girl, a pink bow in her hair, sits on her mother’s lap. 

Under questioning, the Venezuelan family admits they crossed the border into the United States in April at Nogales, Arizona, where they presented themselves to border agents, were allowed to pass through and were told they must appear at removal proceedings. They have applied for temporary protected status, a form of relief allowed only for people from countries that are especially dangerous because of political or environmental reasons. For Venezuelans, only those who crossed into the United States before July 31, 2023, are eligible for this protection under a federal order.

The couple told the judge they were applying for asylum and work permits. 

This adds to the confusion. Work authorization applications are a separate process, filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, while asylum requests are handled in the courtroom. For an immigrant to get a work permit, their asylum case must have been pending for 180 days, without any delays caused by the applicant — meaning that if a person asked for more time to find an attorney, the clock stops on their wait for a work permit. 

“Are you afraid to return to Venezuela?” the judge asked, a question translated by an interpreter and into their headsets. 

“Sí,” the Lugos both responded, nodding their heads. 

The hearing was short. The judge urged them to complete their asylum application, then told them to come back — in a year and eight months. 

“It’s a long time from now,” Judge Gardzelewski said. 

The Lugos were not the only family to come with their children, everyone dressed up, little girls with their hair in bows. One mother sat next to her husband at the courtroom table, her daughter on one leg and her son on the other. 

“You don’t have to bring your children back to court,” Gardzelewski said, adding that he understood “you may not have anyone to watch them.” 

Some immigrants mistakenly assume that they must bring their entire family, and that they must impress the judge who could decide on the spot to allow them to stay in the country. Instead, they are told to fill out pages of documents and come back in two years. 

“They are clearly taking it very seriously. They are presenting themselves,” said Chapin, who represented immigrants in New York before coming to CU. She feels like thanking those families “for bringing some dignity to this because we are undignified. We don’t have any counsel to help them.”

We need defenders for these immigrants because it is a shitshow without.

— Violeta Chapin, An associate dean and head of an immigration law clinic at the University of Colorado

For those who are in immigration court for their initial appearance, the hearings are handled in bulk as a “master calendar.” On some days, immigrants who speak Haitian Creole or French are assigned to one courtroom, while a handful of courtrooms function in Spanish. 

The judges speak in English, all of it repeated by an interpreter seated in the courtroom. Everyone filling the rows of wooden benches stands and raises their right hands, swearing to tell the truth as a group. 

As one hearing is about to begin, court staff realize that two people assigned to a Spanish-language courtroom speak Portuguese. The Brazilian couple is told their initial hearing has been rescheduled since there is no Portuguese interpreter available that day. They are told to return in one year and four months.

After the Brazilian couple leaves, looking bewildered, Judge Tyler Wood explains to the packed room that this is the beginning of their removal proceedings. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sent them a notice to appear because they came to the United States illegally, or presented themselves to border patrol agents and were allowed to pass, but triggered the federal government to begin a court case to remove them from the country. 

First, he explains, the court will determine whether the allegations are true, and then, whether they are allowed to stay in the United States. Court staff pass out a list of lawyers who can represent them for “little to no cost,” the judge says. There are not nearly enough lawyers in Colorado to handle the workload, however. 

Beware of “notarios” selling citizenship documents for hundreds or thousands of dollars, Judge Wood says. That’s not real, he warns. 

The people in the courtroom have the right to bring forth evidence, to submit documents and question witnesses. If the judge orders them deported, they have 30 days to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Virginia. 

They are allowed to remain in the United States while their case is pending, as long as they commit no crimes and show up for their immigration court dates. 

“Many people who come to court fear returning to their home county,” the judge says, explaining that they can apply for asylum and have to turn those applications in at a window on the third floor. 

All of them are told to make sure to show up at their next court appearance in September 2025. 

“That’s going to give you plenty of time to find an attorney to represent you or for you to decide to represent yourself,” Judge Wood said. Eventually, he will decide whether they can stay in the United States. It’s not his job, he told them, to decide who gets work permits, sign them up for driver’s licenses or enroll their children in school. 

“I wish you and your families the very best,” he said, and the crowd filtered back into the noisy hallway.

“Here we are, thanks to God”

Linda Torres crossed the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, with her husband and three children, so exhausted she could hardly stand up. They passed through notorious Gate 36, where migrants frequently breach coiled razor wire, to a sandy bank on the edge of the river in the dead of winter. 

When Torres and her family presented themselves to border agents last winter, they told them that they planned to make it to Chicago and apply for asylum and that they were fleeing oppression and poverty in their native Venezuela. They were allowed to pass, and given an immigration court date in Chicago in August 2026. 

But the bus to Chicago wasn’t leaving that day. Weary and shocked by the death and violence they had witnessed during a four-month journey of walking through the jungle, hopping off moving trains and sleeping on the streets, they boarded the bus that was there. It took them to Denver. 

“I couldn’t stand on my feet anymore,” Torres said in Spanish. 

After spending the winter in a city-funded hotel room, they moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Aurora, which her family of five shared with Torres’ nephew, as well as a woman and her daughter whom they met in the hotel shelter. 

Four months after arriving in Colorado, Torres’ 3-year-old son was still waking up scared. “He tells me, ‘Mom!’ and starts crying. ‘The train is coming, run, run!’ It’s hard,” she said. “It’s a trauma.” 

After fleeing Venezuela, the family spent several years in Colombia, where they struggled to earn enough money to pay rent no matter how much they worked and Torres’ now 12-year-old daughter was twice denied entrance to school, she said. It took them two months to reach Mexico, crossing through the 60-mile stretch of jungle called the Darién Gap with a toddler and a baby, and another two months, sometimes sleeping on the streets, in Mexico before making it to the United States. 

Torres saw “too many dead,” she said. “We walked over the dead. We walked over them because the mud covered them.” The worst was discovering a family of migrants who died together in their tent in Mexico. “I approached the tent and opened it, and there was the dad, the mom and the baby,” Torres said, on the verge of tears. “A small baby, very tiny. I saw many things. 

“It cost me a lot. I cried a lot. I suffered a lot. I had horrible nights. We endured a lot of cold, rain. We went hungry, but here we are, thanks to God.”

While she and her husband wait for work authorization, Torres has been selling roses, chocolates and lollipops outside an Aurora grocery store, sometimes bringing her son and 1-year-old daughter with her. She makes anywhere from $20 to $70 per day. She enrolled in the city of Denver’s six-month asylum program, where she signed up for English classes and attended a mental health session about dealing with trauma. A local nonprofit, ViVe Wellness, helped her family find the apartment in Aurora, after they lost $500 in fees applying to multiple apartments. And the city program is helping them pay the first few months of their rent. Her oldest daughter is enrolled in school.

The court date, and knowing they could face deportation years after building their new lives, hangs over them. 

With help from a pro-bono attorney at a nonprofit, Torres filed the required paperwork to get their court appearance changed to Denver from Chicago. Torres is hoping the same attorney will help them prepare their applications for asylum, gathering enough evidence to prove that it would be dangerous for them to return to Venezuela.

In Venezuela, Torres and her mother worked at a government-operated oil company, but after Torres had been there five years, employees were abruptly laid off and weren’t paid for hours they had already worked. Her mother never got her pension. In the neighborhoods around them, murder was common, she said. 

In Colorado, she has faced xenophobia and racism like nowhere else, she said. “Whatever they put me through, I’ll face it,” she said. “I came here to work. That’s why I go out every day. I endure humiliations, people shout insults at me, throw cups of water at me. There are good people, and there are bad people.”

But, if they are allowed, Torres thinks her family will stay. She still longs for home, but said her family “deserves better.”

“I would like them to have a life, to study, not to work, but to study because it’s my job to work. I want them to study and be something in life so they don’t have to go through what I’ve gone through.”

Immigrants without lawyers are 10x more likely to face deportation

Immigrants without an attorney are far more likely to lose their case. 

Those who have attorneys are 10 times more likely to avoid deportation compared to those without, and immigrants with attorneys are 3.5 times more likely to be granted bond and be released from detention, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, which advocates for justice system reform. 

Of the 136,000 immigrants ordered to be removed from this country in the first half of this year, about 110,000 did not have attorneys, according to research from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Denver immigration judges, on average, ordered deportation for 60% of people whose cases were decided from 2018-2023, according to the university’s research. 

“Preparing the documents, filling out the forms, understanding what you need to assemble a case, putting it all together in the format that makes sense — that is the job of a lawyer,” said Regina Bateson, a political science professor at CU Boulder who has taken students to Denver immigration court. “Most clients are going to struggle to do that effectively.

“Trying to teach yourself to be an immigration lawyer DIY-style is very difficult, especially when you might not be very literate even in your own language.”

Applications for asylum are 12 pages, but can stretch to hundreds of pages with added documents. If an asylum-seeker messes up the paperwork, such as forgetting to list a child in the correct space, it can cause delays and extra proceedings to correct it. 

“There are tons of questions about your history and it needs to be in English — it’s the entire basis of your asylum claim,” said Christina Brown, an immigration attorney and executive director of the Colorado Asylum Center, which holds clinics for migrants enrolled in the city’s asylum-seeker program. “If one of your addresses is wrong, the Department of Homeland Security attorney is going to tear you apart on cross examination. Everything about it is a life or death thing.”

To make a case for asylum, people need to prove a “well-founded fear of persecution” because of race, religion, political opinion or social group. Poverty on its own is not a qualifier. Nor is generalized violence — people have to prove that they were specifically persecuted. 

People without a lawyer might write two sentences in the small space that invites them to describe why they fear returning to their home country. Those with a lawyer, meanwhile, might write “see attached document” that would detail, over multiple pages, the reasons that returning home is dangerous to their lives. 

Bateson lived in Guatemala, where she worked for the U.S. Foreign Service, and now provides “country conditions” expert witness testimony, pro bono, for Guatemalan immigrants who are seeking asylum. Attorneys for immigrants seek out Bateson’s testimony about local vigilante groups in Guatemala that capture and torture people who are suspected of crimes, for having opposing political views or who are not “socially tolerable.” 

She writes declarations that explain conditions in Guatemala that back up an asylum-seeker’s story about persecution and safety. Her work becomes part of a case file, which might also include police reports, medical records and psychological evaluations sought by the immigrant’s attorney proving post-traumatic stress disorder. Since the applicant is now in the United States, this requires getting declarations from relatives, friends and neighbors back home who might be difficult to track down, as well as translating all the documents to English.

Those who don’t have an attorney are unlikely to provide any of this on their own behalf. 

In Bateson’s view, Denver’s immigration court judges and staff are friendlier, more patient and approachable than she has witnessed in courtrooms across the country. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t still confused.

“Even if the immigration court is trying to do a good job explaining the process, it’s very hard to understand, even if the interpretation is perfect,” she said. “It is just hard for a lay person to understand. When do you show up? How to keep the court updated with your address? If the court is telling you not to come back until 2027, a reasonable person might be skeptical of that. This is really how it works?” 

Immigrants are often also confused about how to change their court location if they ended up living in Denver instead of the city they mentioned when they crossed the border. They mistakenly think a change-of-address form is all that is required, not realizing they also have to file a motion with the court to change the location. By the time some realize it, it’s too late, and they lose their case.

“People think they are going to change my court to Denver from New York and their hearing is in five days,” said Brown, with the Asylum Center. “You have to be in New York in five days. There is no way around it.” 

Immigration courts are overwhelmed nationwide, with the number of pending cases now at 3.7 million — about the population of Los Angeles. Syracuse University researchers pointed out the acceleration at the end of 2021, saying that while the backlog grew during the Obama and Trump administrations, it had grown “breakneck pace” under President Biden.

To deal with it, immigration courts have tried to streamline operations by encouraging more pre-hearing conferences “to resolve matters that do not require valuable court docket time” and scheduling hearings in more efficient ways, said Kathryn Mattingly, press secretary at the Executive Office for Immigration Review, within the U.S. Department of Justice. The system resolved more than 500,000 cases across the country last year, she said, “far exceeding production of previous years.”  

She pointed out that the Immigration Review office “does not control the number of such filings” because although the federal agency hears the cases, it’s the Department of Homeland Security that is filing them —1.2 million new cases in immigration court last year, up from 228,000 in 2016. 

A federal regulation allows attorneys to help immigrants with proceedings without requiring them to commit to taking on the full case, which has helped thousands of people obtain legal advice, Mattingly said. She would not say how long, on average, an immigration case will now take to reach resolution.

“It is important to note that each asylum case is unique, with its own set of facts and circumstances which all factor into adjudication times,” she said, in an email.

Immigration proceedings are civil, not criminal

The United States justifies not providing lawyers for people in immigration court because these are civil, not criminal, proceedings, said Chapin, who worked for the public defender in Washington, D.C., before coming to CU. Unlike indigent defendants in criminal cases, people in immigration court — even if they are detained — do not get public defenders.  

The system is such a labyrinth of complex law, that it’s difficult even for attorneys to navigate unless they do nothing but immigration cases. On top of that, law can change based on politics and who is the president. 

When former President Obama was in office, Chapin had a client whose claim for asylum centered on domestic violence. The hearing was a month out, but was canceled and reset for two years later. By then, Donald Trump was president, and his attorney general, William Barr, removed domestic violence as a legitimate claim. Under President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland restored it. 

“The immigration courts answer to whoever the attorney general is, which means the executive branch is deciding what happens in the judicial branch,” Chapin said. “The immigration courts are not independent.” 

The problems with the system are not due to the influx of South Americans over the past couple of years — they go back decades, Chapin said.

“That’s how absurd our immigration system is,” she said. 

Immigration attorneys in Colorado estimated there are 50 or fewer of them working on cases, and it’s difficult for them to take on the cases pro bono because they drag on for years. The longer a case takes, the more likely the law changes before it’s complete.

“When these cases take so long it’s not just, ‘I don’t know what is going to happen in my case.’ It’s that I don’t know what is going to happen in the law,” said Monique Sherman, detention program managing attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, which represents families and children and immigration proceedings.

The rules could change again, depending on who is elected president. Trump, who has repeated false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets and Venezuelan gangs have “conquered” Aurora, has promised massive deportations beginning in those two cities. 

Colorado created a first step toward providing public defenders in immigration court under legislation passed in 2021. The Immigrant Legal Defense Fund, with $350,000 in state money through the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, goes to nonprofits providing legal help to people fighting removal proceedings. Most of the fund, 70%, is for detainees in Aurora. As the largest immigrant advocacy group in the state, RMIAN gets the bulk of the funding, while some is shared with Mountain Dreamers, based in Frisco, the Denver branch of the International Rescue Committee and Alianza NORCO in Fort Collins. 

It has helped 184 immigrants with legal defense since 2022. This year, the state legislature allocated an extra, one-time boost of $350,000, for a total of $700,000.

For those who are on their own without attorneys, RMIAN staff put on “know your rights” presentations and set up a help desk most days of the week at the federal courthouse in Denver. The number of people who attended these presentations three years ago was in the hundreds. It surpassed 3,500 in the past year. 

And for people in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Aurora, the nonprofit makes a list each day of those whose hearings are up next, then asks a guard who works for the private company that runs the center to go to the dorms and ask people whether they want to meet with the advocacy network. The facility has about 1,200 detainees, and RMIAN has a legal staff of 44. 

“As a small nonprofit organization, we can’t possibly represent that many people,” Sherman said, noting that the consequences for detainees are huge. 

“In Aurora, if somebody hasn’t filed out an application because they don’t speak the language, the judge will just order them deported because they didn’t file the application in time.”

“Being in limbo is all some of us know” 

People waiting years for a resolution to their court case feel some sense of relief knowing that as long as they follow the rules, including showing up for court hearings, the government will not deport them, said Gladis Casas Ibarra, co-director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Still, they are living in limbo. 

“It gives folks a sense of safety, at least for the next few years. They don’t have to worry about being separated from their family,” said Ibarra, who moved to the United States from Mexico at age 8 and is a DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, recipient. “But being in limbo is all some of us know. It adds a level of stress that I feel is unnecessary. For people who are applying for asylum and made this incredible life-changing journey and then to be placed on hold, it is something hard to explain.”

Yenny Andreu Vivas, who immigrated to the United States from Colombia two decades ago and, last year, married her husband, who is Cuban, works as a navigator with the immigrant rights group Alianza NORCO in Fort Collins. She spends much of her time emphasizing to people how important it is that they show up for court. 

For many, the journey to the federal courthouse in Denver — the only immigration court in Colorado besides the one for detainees held at the ICE detention center in Aurora — is a burden because they don’t have their own vehicle. If they can’t get a ride from a friend or someone at their church, they have to spend hours on public buses. 

She tells them, “Try your best not to miss it! Because if they do, it will be deportation. Even if they don’t have an attorney, the important thing is that they show up.”

Many are confused, too, Vivas said, about how to apply for a work permit and how the waiting period is tangled up with their asylum case. 

“For them to find out the process is actually not that simple, that worries them a lot,” Vivas said. “The majority are coming already with trauma, so finding out they have to wait, six months, seven months, a year, depending on when they file the asylum application, to apply for work authorization — it’s a very long time when you have bills to pay and need to buy food.”