this is a very unusual thing in federal court, lawrence. you typically have a half dozen defendants waiting in court for their case. having 60 to 70 defendants in a courtroom waiting for these misdemeanor 1325 cases is very, very unusual for federal court. you see that in state court. the other thing that was unusual was the way they combined the initial appearance, the plea, and even the sentencing all into a one-time event that lasted really just one or two minutes per defendant and still took the better part of two to three hours. the result is prosecution of these misdemeanor cases in a conveyor belt fashion, and sentences being handed out, same-day service, and almost 100% of all defendants pleading guilty rather than elect to take a trial. danny, what is the state of clarity or confusion?
not trust the trump administration at all. they are trying to get answers. they say they re not going do leave until they get some answers. they do say there are again stressing, there are only boys here. they are trying to find out where the girls are being held. danny, you ve been outside of an immigration court. tell me about what s going on down there. have they cleared up some of the confusion that we saw yesterday? we were actually at federal criminal court today. immigration court is a separate location. and, almost well, actually, every single defendant was remanded to the custody of customs and border patrol, so they will surely be ending up at immigration court and go through those proceedings shortly. but in federal criminal court today, we are before the magistrate who has the power to hear guilt ply pleas and senten defendants in misdemeanor cases and that s exactly what he did. almost every single defendant pleaded guilty to misdemeanor entry of the united states
offenders plummeted from around the area of 15 months down to maybe 1 month and the reason is the government is increasingly prosecuted misdemeanor cases and the result, somewhere from 60 to 70 defendants in a courtroom in a hearing, and the prosecution, the plea and the conviction are all done, conveyor belt-style. once again, something you just don t see in federal criminal court that often. dan, i want to ask about something i read in the new yorker. sent somebody to mexico to report on prison, someone documented immigrants are held, and the public defender quoted in that article. my clients don t even care about beating the charge they re facing. it makes it harder to represent them, because all they want is to be with their children. you just heard there from gabe gutierrez talking about this similarly. really, all these folks care about is being reunited with their children no matter where they are. a lot of them spread across the country. are you hearing similar things
guilty. it s something that in my experience defending criminal cases you just don t see. and you can attribute this skyrocketing docket to the increased prosecution not of the felony cases but the misdemeanor cases. i want to ask you quickly something the president brought up again just now when he did this event at the white house, which is suggesting catch and release means that asylum seekers are set loose and never appear for the immigration hearing. want to read what jennifer ruben wrote in the washington post. under the intensive supervision papers program which used ankle monitors, telephone checkups that used boyee met contradict voice recognition software, in person reporting to supervised participants, 99.6% of the immigrants show up for their hearings. she cites another program that the trump administration discontinued where 100% made it to their court appearances.
the president doesn t seem to think that is a realistic thing or something that needs to be done. from a pure process standpoint, how overloaded are the immigration judges? they re overloaded. theigration judges are appointed by the attorney general. my guess is they re using this as a funding battle in congress and they want to see funding for a wall than judges. prosecutors don t handle this. we re expected to balance resources, make decisions about priorities and that s oftentimes that you saw we did not go after the misdemeanor cases about simple illegal entry into the country. you went after re-entry offenders. but the misdemeanor cases don t draw a priority. that s why we give deference to changes in policy, this makes a political statement than to use