The Baton Rouge Immigration Court has been enforcing a blanket order by judges to bar all members of the public — including immigrants’ family members — from all individual hearings, a court staff member told The Lens on Monday.
That ban is now the basis of an administrative complaint delivered to the U.S. Department of Justice.
United States courts are open to the public. Immigration courts are no exception. But the Baton Rouge Immigration Court is flouting that standard, contends a complaint delivered to the court Monday on behalf of the advocacy group Mision Migrante and the general public, who have been “repeatedly and illegally denied public access to observe proceedings.”
The complaint demands that the court immediately open to the public, in accordance with the law.
Public access seems to be violated in the Baton Rouge Immigration Court more than anywhere else in the nation, said lawyer Bill Quigley, emeritus professor of law at Loyola University, who represents Mision Migrante leader Rachel Taber and four other people who were denied access to immigration court hearings. He reached that conclusion after speaking with other lawyers and activists about the issue. “Some courts are just wide open all the time. Others are patchy. Nobody has been as bad as this,” he said.
The Lens verified the court’s closure order by attempting to attend an individual hearing on Monday, shortly after the complaint had been delivered. A security officer at the door told the reporter that, in the interest of privacy, judges had unilaterally closed courtrooms dating back to the court’s opening in October.
“Right now, per judge discretion, they don’t want anybody in individual hearings,” said the security person. “Even the family members have to sit outside.” People were sometimes allowed to attend master hearings if the judge decided there was enough space in the courtroom that day, he said.
An administrator at the court’s front desk, who declined to share her name, told The Lens’ reporter that the directive had come from “headquarters,” meaning the U.S. Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. She handed the reporter a two-page printout from the Immigration Court Practice Manual, with one bullet point highlighted. The highlighted portion reads, “The Immigration Judge may limit attendance or close a hearing to protect parties, witnesses, or the public interest, even if the hearing would normally be open to the public,” then cites a federal regulation.
The staff member expressed surprise to hear that the reporter had attended hearings at another Louisiana immigration court. Members of the public and press are consistently allowed to attend immigration hearings in other courts across the country.
Denied dozens of times
Mision Migrante courtwatch volunteers have attempted to observe hearings within the Baton Rouge court “dozens of times over the past several months,” according to the complaint, which carefully documents the months of denials for individual hearings: 52 times between October 2025 and May 2026. Only one person during that time period was allowed to watch an individual hearing. Every other time, the volunteers were turned away.
Observers have been permitted to attend six immigration master hearings, which are similar to criminal court first appearances, but were denied entrance to master hearings seven times.
The denials fly in the face of the U.S. Constitution, which generally requires court proceedings to be open to the general public, Quigley said. “The right of the public and press to access courts and observe proceedings is a cornerstone of the First Amendment,” he said. The public has a right to information held by the courts, and members of the public must be able to participate in our government.
The closed Baton Rouge court also allegedly violates several other federal government regulations and statutes, including those of the Federal Code of Regulations and the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers immigration courts across the nation. The DOJ’s website for the Baton Rouge Immigration Court’s also states that “immigration court hearings are open to the public, with limited exceptions as specified in law.”
The highlighted section of the printout given to The Lens’ reporter referred to the very federal regulation that the plaintiffs say the Baton Rouge court is violating.
“All hearings, other than exclusion hearings, shall be open to the public,” reads the regulation (emphasis added). The “shall” means that this is a requirement — not an option. The federal regulation then lists the four specific exceptions to that requirement. The Baton Rouge handout referred to exception (b), which reads, “For the purpose of protecting witnesses, parties, or the public interest, the Immigration Judge may limit attendance or hold a closed hearing.” Court staff made it clear to The Lens’ reporter that the closed courtroom was not an exception that was based on the circumstances of any particularly sensitive case.
The federal statute lists three other exceptions. Courts can be closed if the courtroom faces overcrowding; for cases that involve an abused spouse or child; and for cases that involve information under seal. The EOIR policy also allows parties from the case to file a motion asking an Immigration Judge to close a hearing. “You can close for specific reasons. But you cannot close the court. You cannot say, ‘No, it’s not open,’” Quigley said.
Neither the Baton Rouge Immigration Court nor the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s Office of Policy responded to queries by press time.
‘Closed all the proceedings to the court all day’
Mision Migrante has been documenting lack of access at the Baton Rouge Immigration Court since shortly after it opened.
On Oct. 20, 2025, a group of people attempted to attend a hearing and were told that the judge had closed the court to the public all day. “When they advised that they had permission from one of the respondents, they were again told that the judge had closed all the proceedings to the court all day,” reads an October administrative complaint filed by Taber and four others, addressed to the court, the U.S. Attorney General, the director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, and U.S. Rep. Troy Carter.
In December, the DOJ Office of the Inspector General responded in writing, advising that the complaint had been forwarded to the Executive Office of Immigration Review. The EOIR never responded.
Two Mision Migrante volunteers, Bonnie Byland and Nancy Grush, have also joined as named plaintiffs in a separate case in Washington, D.C.’s district court. In that case, Advocates for Human Rights, headquartered in Minneapolis, have filed a federal lawsuit to compel immigration courts to comply with public-access laws, alleging that immigration judges in Minnesota’s Fort Snelling Immigration Court sometimes locked their courtroom doors.
Given today’s fraught atmosphere about immigration enforcement, access to these proceedings, in Baton Rouge and elsewhere, are more important than ever, argues this week’s complaint.
“Public oversight has never been more urgent,” the complaint states. “Closing these courtrooms does not make the process more orderly. It makes it less accountable. Thousands of lives are at stake. Follow the law. Open the doors. Let the public in. Let the public see. Let the public know.”
