Justice Lost in Translation: When Language Barriers Derail Asylum Trials
-Daniel Jeon and Silas Fleming
Earlier this week, as summer interns with OCSILiO, we had the privilege of attending a trial with the rest of the team. Our client in this case was a man who escaped from enslavement and was seeking asylum in the United States. The trial was ultimately pushed back due to the court-appointed interpreter's inadequacy, highlighting a major shortcoming in the federal immigration court system.
Our client’s language, Pulaar, is uncommon even globally, but especially so for a courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio. From the very beginning of the trial, we experienced delays due to problems with the interpreter, who was appearing by video from an unknown location. Throughout our time in court, questions were repeated many times due to misinterpretations that led to even more delays. For example, during the confirmation of the contents of the asylum application, the court spent a significant portion of time trying to fully confirm that our client understood all of the information on the form. A normally simple process took much longer due to the interpreter’s inability to accurately render our client’s statements from Pulaar into English.
During direct examination, there were multiple times when our client would answer a totally different question than what was asked. Eventually, we had a ten-minute recess because of background noise interruptions from the interpreter. During the break, our own interpreter, who speaks the same dialect of Pulaar as our client and knows him well, listed the many mistakes made by the court interpreter. It was clear that the court’s interpreter had not only delayed the case but also made it impossible for our client to effectively tell his story in court.
The most glaring evidence of the government's shortcomings in this matter was provided by the judge. After the court agreed to postpone the case to find a better interpreter, the judge informed us that there is an interpreter of the same Pulaar dialect as our client who actually lives in the area and has interpreted in other cases before with no complaints. This interpreter, being local, would have been able to physically be present in court, which would have been a lot simpler and more effective than a video call. That interpreter should have been assigned to the case in the first place! Even beyond just the specifics of this case, this incident highlights how the government's reliance on undertrained contract interpreters provided by large corporations is negatively impacting real people seeking help.
Because of these inefficiencies, the trial has been delayed until the other interpreter is available, which we have just learned is seven months from now! The fear of mistreatment by immigration enforcement will linger with our client for that much more time! Thankfully, the OCSILiO team is equipped to handle this setback. Not only were we able to identify the interpreter's shortcomings due to having our own language expert in attendance, but we were also able to stop the trial before the most important parts of the testimony. Although this case does not yet have a true happy ending, it is important that we understand the inefficiencies when representing someone in court who does not speak English. Groups such as OCSILiO need to continue to identify these issues and correct the system so every client—especially in immigration court—gets a chance to fairly make their asylum claims and have them fully understood by the judges who sometimes decide whether they live or die.
