John Oliver uses a grimly hilarious court TV show to highlight the problems with U.S. immigration courts

John Oliver takes on immigration court
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Last Week Tonight)

U.S. immigration courts are "one of those things that you may not know much about, but are actually hugely important to a significant number of people — like gefilte fish or the Insane Clown Posse," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. You've probably seen stories of ICE raids on workplaces and families, but America's immigration court system, where those detainees end up, "is no less troubling," Oliver said. These 60 courts hear hundreds of thousands of cases a year, the stakes can be life or death, and "the system is a complete mess."

Oliver walked through how we got to a situation where, in the words of one judge, the courts are "doing death penalty cases in a traffic court setting," including a surge of immigration from Central America, ramped-up immigration enforcement, and the "glacial" hiring of judges. Also, because these are civil trials not criminal ones, the government doesn't have to provide lawyers for those who can't afford them, so the majority of immigrants — some as young as 2 years old — show up in court without an attorney. To show how ridiculous that is, Oliver played parts of "the single greatest mock trial ever recorded," of a 3-year-old trying to learn immigration law, as suggested by an actual immigration judge.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.