A Terrible Day for Rain
About the Author: Edwin Salazar holds a bachelor’s degree in communication studies from California State University, Long Beach, with an emphasis on mediation and conflict resolution. His writing is informed by firsthand experience observing immigration court with Justice In View. He intends to pursue a career in law as an immigration attorney.
Abstract: Immigration court is where families are asked to prove their worth—and still may be told they are not enough.
Keywords: Los Angeles; family separation; positionality
Citation
Salazar, Edwin. 2026. “A Terrible Day for Rain.” Semi-Structured (Washington, D.C.), On Ethnographic Witnessing: Student Encounters with Immigration Court, vol. 1 (3). https://doi.org/10.57912/34113300
In Northern Los Angeles, the court begins at the usual time, 8:30 a.m. Fluorescent lights hum above us, flattening the room into the same pale brightness I have come to associate with these mornings. I follow my routine of sitting in the left-back corner of the room, close enough to hear but far enough to feel, or to hope, that I am not being watched. I hide in plain sight, notebook low in my lap, and a pen gripped tightly with a sweaty hand. There is always tension in watching. I am there to observe, but observation in this space never feels neutral. The benches are stiff, the kind that make every shift of weight audible. Attorneys shuffle papers at the front. Families squeeze onto the same bench, speaking in low voices, while those detained appear only as faces on a television screen mounted along the left wall beside the DHS attorney’s table. They call in from an undisclosed detention center, their faces filling the monitor as an officer stands watch somewhere beyond the frame. The judge enters, and everyone stands. The hearings begin—two master calendar hearings and one merit hearing are on the morning docket. The judge notes that the merit case is scheduled for 9:00 a.m.
The judge looks up toward the benches and calls the first master calendar case, though the respondent is not among those seated in the courtroom. Instead, a Mexican woman appears in custody on the television screen—present, yet physically absent from the courtroom where decisions about her life are being made. She pleads for voluntary departure, fighting back tears, but the request is denied. She then asks the judge to consider the same request for her incarcerated 80-year-old mother. Again, she is denied, told that the two cases are separate matters. Moments later, she begins to cry. “I just want to go home,” she says through tears. The judge offers no reassurance, no resolution. The case is rescheduled, the hearing ends, and the screen goes dark.
As the judge turns to the second master calendar case, an A-number is called into the courtroom. What begins as a string of digits quickly takes shape as a mother rises from the benches with her young son, who couldn’t have been older than 5 at her side. She approaches the stand visibly nervous with every step. The judge asks a simple question: “Where is your attorney?” She explains that she cannot afford one. She works as a dishwasher at Denny’s, surviving paycheck to paycheck.
As she speaks, my attention drifts to her son sitting beside her. He absentmindedly swings his small feet back and forth, staring around the courtroom with the restless curiosity of a child too young to understand where he is. He does not yet realize that his mother is standing before the court, fighting for a chance to stay.
The judge acknowledges her efforts, but the hearing moves forward. DHS filed a motion to pretermit her case under the Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA). The judge granted DHS’s motion to pretermit, ending her asylum claim before it can be fully heard and bringing her one step closer to removal. I glanced down at my watch—it was shortly after 9:00 a.m. when the courtroom door suddenly opened.
An older Hispanic man enters the room wearing a dark blue guayabera, neatly pressed, and what appear to be his nicest dress shoes. With him are his three children, the youngest, a son, and two older daughters, along with an attorney.
The man sits on the bench beside me, close enough that I can feel the rhythm of his anxiety before I understand it. His fingers tap the wooden bench; his leg shakes, as he whispers to himself. I try to focus on the hearing, but eventually his whispers reach me. He is praying. Ave Maria.
I hear his voice catch, and I offer him my water. He looks at me and politely declines. His eyes are glossy, but he holds himself together. He is being brave.
The case is called not by his name but by his A-Number. I have already heard numbers like these echo through the courtroom that morning, but this one lands heavily. The digits now belong to the man who had been praying beside me, whose shaking leg and glossy eyes have already made him more than a case on the docket. Before he is seen as a father, he is introduced to the courtroom as a number. His daughters hold on tightly to their younger brother as they watch their father walk to the stand, their eyes filled with tears in a courtroom so quiet it feels as though you can hear their hearts racing. He looks back at them, smiles, and gives a thumbs up, reassuring his children that everything will be okay, and I catch myself staring at him. His silhouette reminds me of my own father. At that moment, I am no longer an observer.
His terrified children are my two older sisters and me.
The judge explains the process, and counsel begins with an opening statement on Mr. Alvarez’s good moral character. Mr. Alvarez has lived in the United States for over 40 years, pays his taxes, has three educated children, and has no criminal history, not even a parking citation. The cross-examination begins, and counsel asks Mr. Alvarez, “If you are deported, will your family leave with you?” In a shaky voice, he says no, they have never been to Mexico, explaining that his children have established lives in the United States. His eldest daughter is an elementary school teacher, his second daughter a nurse at a children’s hospital, and his son a computer science student at the local university.
DHS then takes over the examination and calls Mr. Alvarez’s son to speak. The son, who witnessed his father’s arrest by ICE, speaks in a tone that reopens past trauma. He describes the five weeks of injustice his father endured while in custody: being forced to eat moldy bread or starve, recorded phone calls home revealing the verbal abuse from the ICE agents, days without access to a shower, and an exposed toilet in the middle of a crowded cell shared with ten other men. Photos are presented to the court, and the father’s weight loss is impossible to ignore.
The emotional and financial strain the arrest placed on the family was catastrophic. The son failed his classes and fell into a deep depression that developed into an eating disorder. The daily anxiety attacks led to him losing his job. The son finishes his testimony and returns to the benches, where his sisters receive him with open arms as his tears hit the ground.
Mr. Alvarez’s counsel delivers a closing statement. DHS acknowledges that Mr. Alvarez has, by all accounts, been a law-abiding person, a father, someone with deep ties—but the acknowledgment does not soften the conclusion. Goodness and eligibility are not the same thing.
The judge begins to speak the final words of the hearing, voice tightening. For a moment, we make eye contact, both of us with tear-filled eyes, both of us aware of the decision about to be delivered.
The judge abruptly calls for a break and rushes out of the courtroom, perhaps to contain the emotion that the courtroom has made impossible to hide. Mr. Alvarez’s children are sobbing. They know what is coming. Mr. Alvarez, still with glossy eyes, continues to be brave and shows no fear.
My eyes filled with tears, I could have sworn my father was the one sitting on that stand.
I take a moment outside the courtroom to gather myself as it begins to rain in the hallway.
About the issue
This article is part of On Ethnographic Witnessing: Student Encounters with Immigration Court, a special issue of Semi-Structured. This collection features the work of 22 student ethnographers, who offer insights, analysis, and experiences based on hundreds of hours in immigration courtrooms across the country over the last few years. Through their work in observation projects under the direction of scholar-activists Lauren Heidbrink, Amelia Frank-Vitale, and Rebecca Galemba, students gained critical training in ethnographic practice and a crash course in immigration law, especially in the disjunctures between law on the books and law in practice. Understanding that wider audiences would benefit from hearing and learning directly from their students, Heidbrink, Frank-Vitale, and Galemba approached Semi-Structured to steward this thoughtful, ambitious collection. We are honored to run this issue and invite readers to consider what student observers witnessed, felt, and learned in court and why ethnographic observations are important to broader publics.
Semi-Structured is the open-access journal from the Public Ethnography Lab. The journal is dedicated to showcasing ethnography as it unfolds in the world. This journal exists because we believe ethnographic work matters beyond the academy—that the insights generated through sustained engagement with communities, organizations, and institutions can and should inform decisions, shape practices, and drive meaningful change.