James Pittman: Welcome to Immigration Uncovered, the Docketwise video podcast where we dive deep into the dynamic world of immigration law. I'm your host, James Pittman, cofounder of Docketwise. This is episode 40, and we're here with a frequent friend and guest of the program, Jared Jaskot, who is a partner at jaskott.law and is a founder of Access 61, a new and innovative AI powered platform to help asylum seekers. Jared, welcome back. As always, great to see you.

Jared Jaskot: Thanks, James. It's really great to be here. Congratulations on 40 episodes.

James Pittman: Yeah. It's it's a milestone, and we're we're working hard to chug out continue to chug out fantastic and innovative and interesting content that really uncovers all the nooks and crannies of immigration law. And you are certainly a key player in the scene. So this new platform, Access 61, I mean, you and I have both in our day done of our share of asylum James. And we know, that a lot of one of the main problems that people have is they come into the United States, and they're not aware of the asylum process.

James Pittman: And for that reason and just due to the circumstances of coming from, the country of persecution, You know, for various reasons, they may not file on time. So Access 61 is a platform which you intend to help to alleviate that problem. How how's that how is that gonna happen?

Jared Jaskot: So you hit the nail on the head there, James. That that one that famous 1 year deadline to file your asylum application, part one of that is that it's just not famous enough. It's that same immigration attorneys. Time after time, we see clients. They went to their 1st master calendar hearing. At this point, that could be 2 or 3 years after coming into the country, and only then do they look for an immigration attorney. And and it's, in some cases, too late for them. They basically ruined what would have been a great asylum case. One of the big obstacles to that, we believe, is cost. So people just can't afford to retain an immigration attorney. For years, the immigration attorneys, we were in a bit of a bind too because once we put our name in on that case, we are stuck in that case to the end of the road unless the immigration judge lets us out, which they may or may not do, especially if the client doesn't want us out. So we had these two sides, these folks that couldn't afford us. We couldn't give them lower prices, and and that was really just causing a lot of people's cases that were otherwise good to not have good quality representation. November 2022, EOYOR releases a new rule allowing for limited representation. That was really the big game changer that allowed us to to start offering this kind of service because we can break the work we do for folks up into pieces. So now we can do a 589 for them, have it be high quality, have it hit that 1 year deadline, have them get a work permit, and and get their case on the road with with good representation for an affordable price.

James Pittman: Yeah. I mean, it is, you know, it is a perennial problem with because, I mean, just I mean, immigration attorneys who practice in this area, of course, know, but for those who might be listening who aren't aware of the full scope of the problem. So once someone enters the United States, they wanna file for asylum. They have to do so within 1 year. And if you don't, basically, you're barred from getting asylum unless you can fit one of a few narrow exceptions, either that, you know, there changed personal circumstances or changed country conditions or there were in other words, that affected, your claim for asylum. Right? So maybe changed personal circumstances after you left your country that then make you fearful of returning. That would be one basis for, an an exception to the 1 year bar. Or change country conditions. The the issues in your country that cause you to fear persecution didn't arise until you had already departed the country, and that, therefore, you're you're filing after 1 year of arriving in the US. And the other would be, if there were extraordinary circumstances that somehow prohibited you from actually going ahead and filing within 1 year. All of those are are relatively rare occurrences in terms of getting getting an exception to the 1 year filing deadline. The vast majority of people who who don't meet the 1 year deadline are are not gonna get asylum, and they're going to, probably have to make a more difficult claim for withholding of removal, which is a higher standard and also is a form of relief which does not accord a pathway to a green card and eventual citizenship, or the right to bring any family members to the United States, such as asylum does. So those are, inferior forms of relief, frankly, and that's, you know, that's that's the dimension of the problem. And immigration lawyers see this happen to people time and time again. So now your your partner in this venture is the esteemed Lori Rosenberg, and she's really also a very, an illustrious figure in the area of asylum law. Lori was, at one time, a member of the board of immigration. He was a judge on the board and, in recent years has been a consultant to immigration lawyers who handle asylum claims. So how did you get together with Laurie to found this venture?

Jared Jaskot: Yeah. I had I had an incredible stroke of luck, really, that happened for me in February, which is that I posted on LinkedIn that I was looking for an attorney to work with me part time to just do some consultations. And that was for my law firm, Jaskot Law. And I have found that part time attorneys are really helpful for these consultation only gigs because there's a lot of attorneys out there that due to personal circumstances, they don't wanna work 40 to 60 hours a week, but they still have a lot of talent. And, James, I got 90 applications for the job. It really kinda like blew my head off. I'm like, what the what I is there it just opened my eyes to this idea that there's all these people that wanna do part time work, and they're interested in these sort of almost limited engagements, if you will, in the job of immigration attorney. One of those people was Laurie. And so, Anna Ziegle, the attorney who actually was looking to fill her position. She works for me, part time attorney. But she's retiring. So it's, you know, I I'm trying to convince her not to retire, but nonetheless, I think it's gonna happen. And so I had long notice from her. And so she's one of the people that when she applied, Lori actually reached out to Anna because I had posted about Anna when I posted about the job. And Anna wrote to me and said, Listen, we gotta jump on this. This Lori is an incredible talent. We're so lucky that she's interested in this. And so we started to talk to her and she doesn't speak Spanish, and that's really pretty much all the consultations, which would have made it problematic. But I told her about this other project I was working on for limited scope representation in asylum cases as she just started coming up with all these amazing ideas, and that's how she ended up joining.

James Pittman: Okay. So that was really good stroke of luck. I mean, you you, you had a need at a particular time, and she was looking and wow. And had you known Laurie beforehand, or this was your first acquaintance with her?

Jared Jaskot: Yeah. I had never met her before. I'd read a couple things that she'd put out because, like you said, I mean, she's She's legendary. Luminary. Yeah. And her brain is incredible. I mean, when you talk to her, she's just such an intelligent person. Encyclopedic knowledge of James, the way that she thinks about cases is so special. And so

James Pittman: I got super excited when I saw the 2 of you together because for me, this was like this was a wow moment. I mean, with you and your love for the tech the tech aspect of immigration law and where the tech is going and and Laurie and her being so steeped in asylum law and and someone who who knows it so well and is is really an incredibly passionate person, regarding asylum seekers and this whole area of the law, she's been consistently been someone who has advocated strenuously for fair treatment of asylum seekers. So I was like, wow. This is this is gonna be incredible. So let's let's dig into the meat of it. So now it's an AI powered platform. Now how is AI and tech a tech platform in general gonna help to alleviate the problem?

Jared Jaskot: I think AI, really, for us in this particular use case, what it's helping us deliver on is it's lowering the number of hours that we need to invest in attorney time into the cases. And it's it's also in that way, we're using a little bit of AI for intake. So it's also a docketwise powered company, Access 61. There you go. And I would like to know I think a lot of people sleep on this, but I keep repeating it because it bears repeating. It's important. Automated intake, like DocetWise has, and it has an excellent version of when you initiate a case and you send an intake form to a client. That is AI. It's old AI, very old, but there's conditional logic. There's acquisition of data. These things do help drive quality and they lower the time that attorneys and paralegals need to spend on cases. So, you know, part of the piece of this puzzle is docketwise and and the AI, albeit old school, that a that that docketwise has within. And, you know, and I do believe that docketwise down the road, you know, maybe if we could see some of that intake move to a little more conversational AI instead of the sort of question form style we have, that would be very interesting. And I know that you guys do have some things in the pipeline I'm excited about.

James Pittman: There are. Yes.

Jared Jaskot: So then the other big thing that we're using AI for is actually review. So when, you know, you there's all these areas in the asylum application that have narratives about why you're scared, what's happened to you, what you're scared of happening to you in the future, torture. And what we're doing is we're feeding those narratives into AI with a massive instruction set that Lori and I have created called the Goldilocks test. And that Goldilocks test is making sure that these asylum applications conform with the standards that we've created around what a good asylum application is. So it's helping us on intake.

Jared Jaskot: It's helping us on review,

James Pittman: and those are primarily the areas where we're leveraging AI. Okay. Let's let's talk about the business model and how this is gonna work and how this relates to limited scope of representation. So the traditional business model is you're gonna you're gonna handle the case from start to finish, all aspects of the representation. And, again, the the issue being you've said it a little bit. The issue being that for a lot of people, the cost is the cost for the clients is a problem. People are fleeing their country. They're arriving in the US really pretty much always in difficult circumstances when they're seeking asylum. And, I mean, what like, for a full scope of representation, typically, you're talking over over 5,000 to $8,000, typically.

Jared Jaskot: In my firm, you know, we're often around 16,000. Mhmm.

James Pittman: There you go. So so and, start to finish. And that's, you know, that's just a a a stumbling block for a lot of asylum seekers. So how is this gonna work? Where where what are the contrast? What are the scope of services like, and what what are we talking about in terms of, making the cost more, affordable for the client?

Jared Jaskot: Yeah. So by breaking it up, we're really able to lower that total number, you know, out of the gate. And so, you know, as you knew when you were a practitioner, as I still see in Jaskot Law all the time, we've got a traditional asylum seeker, James into law firm. We require a very high down payment, you know, often 5 or $6,000 against that $16,000 retainer. And then we're talking about, you know, $11,000 of monthly payments, potentially 2 years of $500 a month. And if the court accelerates it, then we're calling the client and say, hey. You know, actually, it's gonna be we're gonna need $8,000 right now. And for a lot of people that have, as you noted, just left their country, just left their job, just left their network, It's just unfeasible for them to enter that kind of financial transaction. And for attorneys, if if there's a lot of risk there as well for us in those kind of transactions. Also, when cases go on for 8 years, even $16,000 is often a bad deal for us as a law firm.

James Pittman: Right. It gets it's unpredictable. There's a lot of problems with it. There's so many there's just so many problems with with with having to do it that way. I mean, first of all, as you said, the the timetable is soft. It's not a it's not a it's not a firm timetable. You don't know, if, you know, something's gonna happen that that makes the case take a lot longer than that. You may have to go to additional hearings beyond, you know, just the the the master couple of masters and the and the individual hearing. I mean, there the things may happen. Case may get, you know, taken off the counter or a lot of things can happen, which which cause the timetable to get either contracted or or dragged out. And then you have to you're faced with having to really do do collections. I mean, you know, in the in an ideal world, clients would always pay on time. But, I mean, when you're it it it's it's oftentimes you're you're having to contact them and follow-up with them. So you you are taking on risk. So alright. So now, how how is this model going to alleviate that?

Jared Jaskot: So, effectively, what we're looking at here is one thing focusing in real quickly on the rule that that EOIR promulgated around limited scope. Right. One of the big keys is that it only covers representation via written pleadings. So you cannot make a limited scope appearance, at a master. And so, you know, that really guides that people that work with us are gonna need to be willing to go to masters a lot. There's no there's no way out of that. So what are we doing? We're gonna break the asylum case into 4 phases. We have the 589. We have evidence gathering. We have, the brief, which has, you know, their particular evidence plus the country conditions evidence. And then what we're gonna do is call we call it prep and rep, Prepare the client for trial and represent them. At that point, we are gonna come in with a full representation because we have to to be able to appear on their behalf. If they want to represent themselves in their individual hearing after doing all that, they can. We'll still do the preparation for them. So, you know, basically, those 4 phases, they can mix and match. They can do any of the above in any order they want, and they can hire us one at a time for those things. And so that's how we're kind of we're turning what has always been presented as a complete solution a lot more into component parts that we're selling, folks.

James Pittman: How's it been going so far? How I mean, how many of these have you done so far this way?

Jared Jaskot: We've done around 25, 589 so far. We want to get more. It's, I think it's a challenge at the at while people don't necessarily like lawyers, I don't think, this the challenge of getting people to apply within that 1st year that we started this conversation with Right. It's a legitimate it's a hard thing, and so we're really I don't think that we've encountered anyone who was really opposed to limited scope. Some people want full representation, but it's really more a question of getting it out there, I think, and continuing to promote the product as we improve our process.

James Pittman: So in other words, from the court side, aside from the fact that your so you've got your written pleadings packet and you've got your notice of limited scope representation, and you're mailing that in ahead of the master?

Jared Jaskot: Yeah. And we offer our clients master calendar hearing coaching so that if because they're gonna have to go alone, we but they don't have to go without any understanding of what's gonna happen in the master hearing. In fact, we'll even practice with them. 1 of the people on our team is an immigration judge. We go through it. We have them our plan down the road is to have groups of people do it in our trainings together, and the idea will be that if they can see each other go through their master in this mock session, that will be helpful to them. So we think that people can go to their masters alone with proper with proper, preparation.

James Pittman: Okay. Let me run through this with you. So so we got the master. You're gonna prepare pleadings, submit a notice of limited appearance. Next step is the judge is gonna, the judge is gonna set a date for filing the I 589. Yeah. So your platform's gonna prepare the I 589. And how about the evidentiary packet that goes with it? Is that all part of the service? Or

Jared Jaskot: Right now, we file the 589 a lot. We don't file it with an evidentiary packet. There's some strategic reasons for that. They primarily I and there's some practical reasons. So the practical side is the more time we spend gathering evidence with clients, the more that is gonna cost. We want that initial 589 to get in as fast as we can for as lower price as we can for clients, to preserve the 1 year deadline, and to get them a work permit. Because these cases take so long, we're gonna gather evidence after that.

James Pittman: Okay. And what's the what's the foreseen role for Access 61 in in submission of evidence?

Jared Jaskot: So we really wanna help people gather evidence. We believe that we can provide that for them. We wanna help them with the evidence gathering phase. We're just we're basically we're gonna see that. We're gonna call that phase 2 is the evidence gathering. Primarily, you know, we're talking about affidavits, occasionally news articles, etcetera. Evidence gathering and asylum James, it's such a challenge anyway because you wanna get all those affidavits as soon as you can to when they came to the United States. But then all the country conditions and all these other things, you don't wanna get until right before their trial. So that we wanna attack that personalized evidence with those affidavits, as soon as possible. We offer that as a separate service in addition to the 589. And then when it comes to country conditions and all those things, we're gonna offer that bundled together with their brief.

James Pittman: Okay. And then how are they gonna prepare to testify at their individual hearing? How is that gonna work?

Jared Jaskot: So they can they can hire us to to represent them in that. They can we also are connected to law firms, all over the United States. If they wanna hire counsel, for instance, that's where they are, which makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, it depends on the person, I think. More and more hearings that I'm seeing, the judge is remote anyway. So having local counsel isn't necessarily gonna be the end of the world if you're gonna be attending your trial via Zoom, or you're gonna be in a courtroom and the judge isn't even there. But if they want local counsel, we will help them find it, or we will enter as full wrap for that preparation prep and wrap phase. And then, you know, there's been a lot of excitement around what circuit law said judge should apply based on where he's sitting. And then this is these are complex problems that are arising in the immigration system that we're seeing, but but we are willing to represent people we would love to. I love trials, and and everyone on our team that that we're bringing to Access 61 loves trials. In fact, we believe that our value proposition to clients focused on trial is really a big part of it because you often see 580 nines that are prepared, and they end up hurting people in trials. The way that the 589 is prepared can be very hurtful. And that could be a notario, or it could be an immigration attorney that doesn't go to trial. And so if you when you go to trial and you see your client get seriously damaged by a 589 being prepared improperly, it it begins to change the way that you think about defensive 580 nines. And so Laurie and I, we spent probably a 100 hours together thinking about what is the best way to fight to create a 589 that's gonna be durable, and it's gonna work for someone in trial even if that trial happens 8 years into the future.

James Pittman: You know, that's really, really smart is to try to really engineer the parameters of the 589 to both make it something which can easily be supplemented, to make it something which is not gonna be restrictive come time to for the individual hearing, where you're not laying a lot of traps for the person to contradict what's in their 589 at the individual hearing. I I mean, I think that there's something to be said for very for Azure doing that's really smart, very intelligently engineer the 589 to make it something which covers all the bases but doesn't doesn't doesn't confine the client and doesn't lay traps. There's an art there's an art form to that.

Jared Jaskot: You nailed it, James. You're so tall. Exactly. So, you know, sometimes you get a 589 as an attorney. You come into a case. The 589's already been done, and it's ridiculously thorough. But the the details and the way they're presented ends up being almost a deposition that opposing counsel can use to fillet your client

James Pittman: And the client can put their memory

Jared Jaskot: as to something that happened 10

James Pittman: years ago.

Jared Jaskot: And It's so hard. And instead of the, what I believe, the fair assumption that the judge should make is, wow. Remembering this minute detail from 10 years ago is not possible. Instead, you get an adverse credibility finding, and your case is dead.

James Pittman: I know. It gets a little artificial. I I you see I 580 nines and sometimes affidavits packed with minutiae, very microscopic details about doing something for 2 days and then walking 5 miles and spending 3 days someplace else. And all this took place in another part of the world, you know, 10 years ago or 15 years ago, whatever. And it's there are things for the the client to trip over.

James Pittman: They can't most people cannot, remember that degree of death. And be prepared to recite it and and and keep their composure upon aggressive cross examination on those details without messing anything up. I mean, it's human nature. I mean, it's so so it's it's it's very smart, to try to avoid all those traps. How are you I how are you publicizing this? I mean, are is there are you making special efforts to kinda get the word out there so that this gains traction?

Jared Jaskot: We've got we've been working on social media, pushing it. On Thursday, August 29th, we're gonna do a free webinar for folks entitled, you know, what to do at your first court date. Right? Hoping we're just trying to we're trying to figure out right now, I think, where exactly are our customers and how do we break through the immense noise of all the media that's getting pushed at them. The stress really I think a lot of times folks that have pending immigration court, but they don't have a court date yet, they almost take it as a gift that they that nothing's come in the mail to them. And so it's a challenge to break through that and say, hey. No. You need to do something about this. You can't wait till your court date arrives. It will be too late. We're rarely seeing court dates arrive within 1 year of people coming into the country. We we've partnered with an app called Lawfully, which I think you know. They're doing some ads inside their app. But we we haven't, I think, nailed the message for that yet as well. So we're still in the early days in terms of trying to get our word out about this program.

James Pittman: Do you see this as a model that would be adopted by nonprofits anytime soon?

Jared Jaskot: It definitely could be because I feel like nonprofits, time and again, in my neighborhood here, they get filled up, and then there's all these people that they can't help. I think one of the things that we would love to do at Access 61 is partner with a nonprofit and say, you know, we'll do a 1,005.80 nines for you. You pay for them. We'll give you a much lower price. We've got the capacity to pump these applications out. I think that a nonprofit that decided to attack this problem by a limited scope, they could have a very broad impact on a ton of people instead of sort of a deep impact for a small number.

James Pittman: Yeah. I mean, may yeah. That's a that's a great idea. I mean, that an organization like Hyas, for example, or similar similar organization you could partner with, they could refer all the cases too. You could be sort of in the outs the outlet where they outsource the or that part of the case. It's it's it's intriguing. I mean, is this something that, you're urging? Do you are you urging other firms to adopt this sort of model as well? Do you see yourself as a pioneer that other firms are gonna follow, or do you think that you're uniquely qualified to do this?

Jared Jaskot: Well, I definitely don't think the

James Pittman: second that I'm uniquely qualified.

Jared Jaskot: But I I our goal is to scale this. We wanna work with we wanna have lots of attorneys working with us at Access 61. We wanna be doing thousands of applications. We wanna keep getting better and better at at doing this. We think that if we can push up the quantity of them, then we can we can talk to the James Pittman of DACAWise and say, hey. We need this specific feature. We can keep our AI getting better, and and there's no reason that with a sufficient number of cases, we can't continue to push the price down on these services. And and then there might be a lot of other things we can help people with as well. I'll give you a great example. We I just had to file a mandamus action in the Eastern District of Virginia, AKA the Jaskot docket, so my client could get an asylum interview. That's how you get an asylum interview right now. That's true. File a federal lawsuit against USCIS. And so For

James Pittman: a case to be adjudicated in the ordinary course of ordinary course of justice.

Jared Jaskot: Yeah. That's yeah. My client the client's kinda look at me funny when I tell. They're like, I have to pay you more to sue them to hear my case.

James Pittman: Sue the government. You get the judge to make a decision on your case.

Jared Jaskot: Yeah. So to my mind, you know, if we have thousands of pending affirmative cases, then we'll be able to push down the price of that federal lawsuit. We'll be through reps, we're gonna get better and faster at this, and we'll be able to help more people. So there's there's lots of ways that having a lot of cases can help us in our mission to continue to increase the quality and decrease the cost simultaneously. And so there's we want to grow. You know me though, James. Of course, I'm willing to talk to other attorneys about this. I just told you our whole playbook. I'm I hope that other attorneys do adopt it. There's a crisis not only of people not filing their 1 year deadline, but the the percentage of people represented in immigration court has fallen over the last 5 years from 60 to 30. This an insane drop.

James Pittman: People are shocked when I tell them that. I the the they're shocked. I mean, I I can recall that, you know, years years years ago when I used to go into court, and, I mean, maybe, like, you know, only half the people would have attorneys, the other half weren't represented. Now it's down to, like, 1 third. Yeah. People are

Jared Jaskot: over 2a half to 4 times more likely to win your case

James Pittman: Absolutely.

Jared Jaskot: If you got a a person sitting next to you with a tie and a jacket. You know? That just we're we're not even talking about quality. Just just having an attorney sitting next to you makes you 2 and a half to 4 times more likely to win your case. And so we need people to be represented because it's it's not fair that good people lose good cases lose just because they can't afford an attorney. Yeah.

James Pittman: I mean, it's a it's it's and then, right, then it's likely to go on appeal, and and people are get removal orders. And then perhaps down the line, they have to hire an attorney to try to get the removal order reopened or file an appeal, or they stay with the final order of removal, and then they're faced with they don't know when ICE and DRO or detention and removal are gonna get around to them. And, I mean, it's just it creates so much backlog in the system and so much congestion in the system. If if we can if that's the whole thing, is if you get people in the system the right way as they're going through from the beginning and give them a fighting chance, give them a chance to have their claim heard under proper circumstances, give them a chance to go through the system, give the system a chance to work, it's gonna it's actually gonna alleviate a lot of this congestion and some of these accumulated problems that happened on the back end because there's what are there? How many people are walking around with removal orders that are unexecuted?

James Pittman: I remember at one time, it was 300,000. It I'm sure it's more than that now.

Jared Jaskot: Gotta be it's gotta be over a1000000. You know?

James Pittman: Yeah. I remember many years ago, here, saying this statistic that there were 300 unexecutive removal orders out there. There's over 3,000,000 cases in

Jared Jaskot: the backlog in immigration court, over a1000000 in the asylum office. This we see ourselves as a partner for the government and for the court here. Because like you said, James, unrepresented people not getting their cases heard, it's a problem for the court and for and for DHS as well. We need people represented because that helps the system go faster and be more efficient.

James Pittman: Yeah. And it it really, it helps the court, the immigration court, maintain the proper standards of justice. There have been, you know, people have commented many learned people who really have invested many years in this field have commented upon the conditions of immigration court and trying to really maintain, the full, full fully sort of fledged standards of due process and, you know, and and the other constitutional guarantees to in the immigration court context where you're dealing with the volume of James, you're dealing with expediencies. You know, you mentioned the rocket docket. You're dealing with people in detention, and so there's tension between people spending time in detention and really them getting the full measure of justice that the constitution guarantees them. All of those create a lot of a lot of tensions. And so having representation, for as many cases as possible really, helps us to really actually live up to the constitutional guarantees of justice and really helps these people who, you know, may indeed have meritorious James. And you don't want people to, get removal orders who have meritorious cases who deserve to have those those because then not only are the standards, the due process standards not being adhered to, but the the asylum law and the the promise that it holds out of asylum for people who genuinely have a legitimate fear of persecution, that becomes hollowed out, by the practicalities of getting justice in the system.

Jared Jaskot: Very well said. Very well said.

James Pittman: It's a it's a it's a it's a huge problem, and it's a it's a worthy challenge, to take on. Now have you had you been somebody who had been advocating limited scope of representation, or had you practiced other forms of limited scope prior to this?

Jared Jaskot: Well, I'd wanted it in this particular context primarily because I would have a client across from me in my office in a consultation, and I would tell them that I needed to file their 589 in 2 weeks, a month, whenever their 1 year deadline was, or immediately you already passed it. And then I would tell them the price, and I would just see them, their face fall. They would be so crestfallen. And, you know, there's almost a temptation as an attorney, and and I many have fallen into it, but it's it was completely illegal to ghost ride a 589 for them because you feel so bad that you can't help them just do this one thing they need to preserve their rights and to get a work permit so they can get on the road. But because I needed to protect myself, I need to protect my law firm, my family, the families of the people that work with me, my my existing clients, I couldn't do that. And so I had looked at the limited scope because I knew of it from other things I'd worked on in my career on access to justice where, like, for instance, in family law, limited scope has been a concept that folks have been talking about for almost 30 years at this point. And so I did know that limited scope was a way to go about it. But in the immigration court context, it was not allowed until the northwest it was allowed by nonprofits, but not by for profit law firms like mine. And then the Northwest Immigrants Right Project actually sued EOIR on this point, and it was only as a result of that lawsuit in a settlement that this rule ultimately came out. So I had been following that lawsuit kind of with my fingers crossed. But as immigration attorneys, one thing that you need to do if you wanna stay in this field is you need to lower your expectations to 0 that any new rules that come out are gonna be helpful to your clients. So when it actually came out in our favor, I I was really surprised, but I knew that there was something there because I knew that it would give us the ability to represent more people by breaking up the services and and correspondingly the fees.

James Pittman: Now you haven't mentioned detained cases, and I I can see where that would present a lot of logistical problems. But, have you have you had any inquiries from detained cases? Will will this will this way of doing things be feasible with them, or you think that I can imagine if you did partner with a nonprofit who is actually able to go to a facility, then then it would work. But what what what have have you done any thinking on this?

Jared Jaskot: I think that you're on the right track, but it's you know, detained cases in general are hard for me between the velocity, the tendency of the court to not grant them, the Travel time. It's it's a really challenging thing. So we haven't gone down that road. I I would be interested in it. I if if we could figure out a way to do it. One thing we really wanna do, is help, and we haven't been able to penetrate it yet again because it's sort of it's hard to get into this Jaskot, but I'd love to help people get ready for their CFI before they cross the border. Mhmm. Person right now, there's a lot of people with good cases that come into these interviews. They're unprepared. They're sleep deprived. They don't understand what's about to happen. And as a result, good cases get you know, people get deported on good cases because they're not ready for their CFI. We would love to help people before they come to the US. We wanna get them after they've got a CBP one appointment or they download the app. Wanna help them get ready for that CFI.

Jared Jaskot: Then once they cross, they can file an excellent 589 that corresponds with their CFI, and we can begin to build a great case for them so they can win asylum.

James Pittman: It's it's really important because that's another it's another one of the friction points where things break down is the the CFI is usually conducted under circumstances where people I don't know. I I don't know how maybe they're not at their best or they're they're it's their it's the first time they're talking to someone, and they're not they have no knowledge of, what would be the best way to frame their case, how best to explain themselves, how much detail to go into, the import of what they're saying now and how that's gonna carry forward. They don't, you know, get that. They don't understand the importance of that, you know, and and and stating things in a way where they're gonna be able to be consistent at a later date. That's a it's another friction point where the CFI is sort of it's either not detail most of the time, it's not detailed enough. Right? They didn't give enough detail enough detail, enough material detail. You know, and and then later, they're they're, you know, they're faced with sort of having to elaborate that and there may be inconsistency. So, I I mean, the the sooner you can have support and intervention to to, you know, get them prepared as to, the level of detail, the importance of what they're having to say, how to explain themselves, how best to frame their case, the better. I mean, haven't haven't you seen that that there's you know, that the CFO often creates some problems later that have to be rectified. Is that in your experience?

Jared Jaskot: Exactly. It's very similar, I think, to the 589 problems that we were discussing when you go into trial. It's a you know, I think I talk to people a lot that have had their CFIs. I rarely get to talk to people before their CFI. It happens, but it's rare. And setting the scene, just for the folks that don't understand it, we're talking you're in a detention center. You're in a cage. You're on a concrete floor. It's freezing cold. There's people all around you in this cage coughing, sneezing, crying. And, you know, at any hour of the day, somebody comes and yells your name 2 or 3 AM, and you're brought into a room, you have no context, and suddenly someone starts asking you questions, you don't really understand what's going on. Like, any of us can understand that that would not be us in our best moment. Right. Now compounding it, you got a coyote who told you you need to say this. You think this person is, to some extent, a professional at this. They this is their job. You got other people in your cell telling you other things. Your cousin who crossed 8 years ago maybe gave you some advice. And it's hard to understand what you should and shouldn't do based on all this information coming at you. People also have mixed reasons for coming to the United States. Maybe you got threatened with death, and before you got threatened with death, you and your family were suffering from food insufficiency because of the economic situation. Well, it would probably occur to you to mention that because that's really important to you. But as attorneys, James and I are gonna tell you, don't even talk about the economic problems that you are having. Don't even bring that up. That's a bad word, And people don't know that. That doesn't occur to them naturally. It's not even really a natural thing to think about. And so folks in that situation being judged on the merits of their case, it's so unfair. And then as you mentioned, James, you get into trial and they say, oh, well, wait. Now you're telling us that he raped you 3 times, but in this CFI, you only mentioned the 2 James? You know, as if people are gonna make up a 3rd rate. It's ridiculous that that the assumption here is that people are inventing these things, but this is how people are being treated in trial, and you really have to explain your way out of these interviews that were conducted in wildly unfair situations. So how can we get in there before they go into that situation and strengthen that case? It gets artificial, and and the dickering over these minutiae gets gets to

James Pittman: the point of absurdity. Because ICE wants to make you would make the client lose their case. So they try to take any angle they can, and sometimes it gets to the to the absurd. They're trying to trip the client up over little microscopic little details or, you know, stating something one way. I mean, look. There's there's cross examination. Cross examination is is what it is, but, you know, these problems with these in the great grand scheme of their claim, these microscopic details, you wanna try to minimize the ability for those things to become traps that people fall fall over. And then because it affects their credibility, then they get an adverse credibility determination. Their claim could be meritorious, but they present their claim in a way in which it casts doubt on their credibility. This is the problem. And that's a James, So you wanna minimize that. You wanna minimize that.

Jared Jaskot: Yeah. And and that's what we're trying to do. That is what we're trying to do. I mean, I think I I I do believe that over time, I wanna attack this framework of cross examination to adverse credibility findings because I think that we all, on all sides, can agree that what we want are for meritorious claims to win and for claims that aren't meritorious to not. But the framework right now, as you put with the minutiae, the cross examination, it's it's not fair. And we do a lot of things in Jaskot Law to prepare people for cross. In my earlier legal career, I was a criminal defense attorney, and CROS was my sort of favorite thing. And so now I put on my DHS hat, and we I go after him. And I my goal is for it to be harder than the trial, And we've gotten we've gotten we've learned a lot from that process, and and we will continue to work with people, on these these kind of things on how to defeat cross. But but if you've got a good CFI, if you've got a good 580,000,000, if you've got good declarations, it really helps you avoid these in trial pitfalls. Absolutely. We're trying to build for them with Access 61.

James Pittman: Alright. Now what is the what's the URL for the website? It's access61.org. Okay. That's easy enough.

James Pittman: Alright. Yeah. Have we Jared, is there anything more that we didn't cover yet that you wanna add?

Jared Jaskot: I hope that if anyone's listening to us that's in DHS or the court and they wanna reach out to me, we need to work towards solutions that don't just involve 8 year individual hearings. We need to come up with ways that we can get good claims adjudicated faster. It's what we've got right now is not gonna be solved by hiring more immigration judges and DHS counsel. And and doing cruel things to people to try to get them to not be able to make it to their merits hearing is not the American way. Well, we need to solve this. And then the other thing I would like to say, James, is that asylum seekers are they're we're not getting a bunch of losers and refuse from other countries seeking asylum. Asylum seekers are amazing. They found businesses at 50% more than native born Americans and 30% more than immigrants that come on business visas. These are the best and brightest from other countries. They are making our country a much better place. You know, we need more asylum seekers because they help our country so much. And they are resourceful. They're brave. Often the reason that they're being persecuted in their home country is because they're such an amazing community leader, and and the the rhetoric around asylum seekers and folks that are coming to our southern border in the United States, it's it's it's dishonest, but it's also wrong because they're they're not criminally insane. They're actually amazing and inspiring people.

James Pittman: Jared, you said something which you took the words right out of my mouth. I mean, the current system is is is faltering so badly, and it requires creative thinking to to, solve some of these problems, to alleviate some of these problems. It it's the the way the system is structured now and the way how long hearings are taking these these, sort of pieces that are in place. Creative thinking and doing things differently is the only thing that's gonna get us get us through this. There's gonna be enough people who are banging the drums on just, you know, incarcerate or streamline procedures or don't accord as much due process or cut corners or or this or that. There's plenty of people who are gonna be banging those drums, but, you know, we need people who are gonna bang the drums to use their brains and think of ways like you're doing where, you are able to actually, you know, present meritorious claims and do it in a way which is able to accommodate the practicalities of inherently diff difficult situations. That's that's the thing. That's where the rubber hits the road is you know? And it's it's a microcosm of a larger access to justice problem in society. I mean, we've got this justice system, which is wonderfully designed, and it's it's got all of these complicated legal standards, and it accords all of these rights. But in order to be able to access that, you need you need resources. The the practicalities of utilizing that system, in the circumstances of of many people who who aren't able to avail themselves privately of all the rights that they're entitled to. That's where the rubber hits the road, and that's the problem of access to justice. And that that is as bad as that is in society, it's 10 times worse when you're dealing with asylum seekers just due to the the actual circumstances in which they're coming to the United States. So it requires brainpower, creativity, using tech, using limited scope of representation, partnering partnerships between public and private, partnerships between nonprofit and for profit to be able to have people do the pieces that they're able to do so that these claims can can be brought through the system and adjudicated in a way that they deserve and that the the the clients deserve. And it's just something that people are that they're gonna have to gear up, you know, for that for that fight and that struggle. And and and as you said, don't think that you you can just do things the old way, and it's somehow gonna work because the system's overloaded, and there's plenty of people who, you know, want to cut all kinds of corners. So we need new answers. We don't need more than so many different new and different answers, and we have to put our heads together, use technology, partner with each other, and figure out how how these different pieces can get done.

Jared Jaskot: I love it. Thanks Thanks for understanding it, James, and thanks for giving us a chance to talk about it today. It's always a pleasure, Barry.

James Pittman: You're very welcome. It's always a pleasure. Alright. Once again, Jared Jaskow with Access 61. Thanks so much for joining us.

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