Accessible to any general reader and rich in historical context, Show Trials traces the evolution and devolution of the American immigration legal system, the systemic failings of the immigration judges, the absence of legal protections for American citizen children, the overzealous government lawyers deporting immigrants, the underperforming private immigration lawyers, and the unrepresented immigrant forced to traverse the system alone.  Show Trials describes in simple terms the absence of due process and the erosion of justice in the modern immigration system that is tasked with handling these important life and liberty cases.

Show Trials assesses these constituents of the modern immigration law system by tracing the author’s real immigration court cases: A persecuted Chinese rice farmer, an Iraqi survivor of Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers, a lesbian fearing Romanian reprisals, an Armenian survivor of KGB attacks and Soviet religious persecution, an American surfer brought to the United States from Syria as a baby, Mexican families with American citizen teenagers, and, among others, Peruvian children seeking safety in America.

Show Trials’ approach enables an assessment of all the immigration system’s constituents, and enables fair accountability to be examined and assessed.  Existing immigration reform literature generally comes from within the broken system and so does not assess fully all the constituents of the system — in large part because various elements of those constituents do not want to fasten blame to themselves.  Too often, the immigration judges and academics blame the private immigration lawyers; in turn, the private bar blames the judges.  This in turn fails to develop a model for true reform because all perspectives are inward looking.  But by detailing significant real cases without any loyalty to any constituent of the immigration system, Show Trials is able to trace fairly and accurately how all members of the immigration community are responsible for the collapse of justice into a system that today all too often provides “Show Trials” instead of real trials and real justice.

The book culminates with seven concrete immigration reform proposals designed to provide the immigration system with a comparable set of protections to our property court system.  These immigration reforms ultimately strive to insure that the system dispenses justice consistent with American ideals of justice.  For more on the specific immigration reform proposals, you can review the Conclusion of the book within Amazon.com book viewer function, which you can access here.