Eight days after The Lens reported on a complaint regarding lack of public access to hearings within the Baton Rouge Immigration Court, Sherron Ashworth, the court’s acting assistant chief immigration judge, sent an email that appeared to address the matter.
Without admitting that the court had barred access to any proceedings, Ashworth directed court staff to ensure courtrooms are open to the public, in compliance with federal law. “I write to remind you that, with limited exceptions, all hearings conducted at the immigration courts are presumptively open to the public,” Ashworth wrote, in a one-paragraph message, sent on June 25 to the staff of the LaSalle, Oakdale, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge immigration courts. Employees who fail to follow federal law may be subject to “disciplinary action,” she warned.
Ashworth’s email came as the Baton Rouge court was being folded into a federal lawsuit brought earlier this year by the nonpartisan nonprofit organization The Advocates for Human Rights, which alleges that the U.S. Department of Justice and its sub-agency, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), are failing to uphold the public’s First Amendment right to access immigration court hearings — at a time when the federal government has been repeatedly accused of violating immigrants’ due process rights.
“Without public oversight, government actors can violate human rights with impunity,” The Advocates for Human Rights noted in a statement. The organization’s statement also warned that the government is “using increasingly harsh tactics in court,” creating a more acute need for “observers [who can] reveal the human cost of these changes and document whether the courts are treating immigrants fairly.”
The lawsuit, now unfolding in a federal court in D.C., names the Baton Rouge Immigration Court as one example of a court where plaintiffs have been unlawfully deprived of their rights to attend and observe immigration court matters and proceedings. Baton Rouge court staff have consistently barred observers from individual hearings since first opening last year, the suit alleges.
Local plaintiffs include retired Louisiana teacher Bonnie Byland, who submitted a declaration that she was turned away from individual hearings in immigration court 13 times between November 2025 and May 2026, each time by security guards or court personnel. At one point, Byland said, she was able to ask a judge about the denied access. The judge told her that the hearings “had many details of sensitive nature.” Byland asked if she could attend if she had the permission of a respondent appearing in court that day. “The judge stated that there is the possibility of a respondent signing a waiver to allow observers,” Byland stated, but the judge “did not believe that any respondent had the ‘capacity to understand’ what they might be signing.”
The Advocates for Human Rights, which is based in Minneapolis, first filed the case in March after court watchers encountered barriers to immigration court access there. The suit asks that the court direct the DOJ to provide an explanation in any and every instance that limits public access to immigration court proceedings. Along with Byland, Nancy Grush, another volunteer with Baton Rouge Court Watch, joined the case in June as a plaintiff.
The EOIR had already been alerted to the pattern of denials eight months before Ashworth’s email, via a previous complaint filed by Quigley in October 2025, which asked the EOIR to intervene and enforce access. On June 17, the day that the most recent complaint was filed, a reporter from The Lens attempted to attend an individual hearing in Baton Rouge, and was told by both a security guard and court personnel that observers were not permitted per judges’ discretion.
One week after legal complaint filed, Ashworth emails court staff
Attached to Ashworth’s June message to court staff was another email, from EOIR director Daren Margolin, dated March 2026, which opens: “EOIR’s immigration courts are open daily to the public.” Margolin’s email included excerpts from EOIR’s policy manual.
The day after Ashworth sent her email, attorneys for the DOJ filed a memorandum in support of their motion to dismiss the case. The filing includes a declaration made by Ashworth, dated June 25, asserting that the access denial was not policy, and noting she’d sent an email to court staff and judges “reiterating the importance of public access to hearings.”
Ashworth’s sworn declaration saying she had emailed court staff appears to be timestamped on June 25 at about 5pm CST — two hours before the email to staff went out.
“Hearings at the Baton Rouge Immigration Court are presumptively open to the public,” reads Ashworth’s declaration. “I am aware of Plaintiffs’ assertions that certain security guards have stated to Plaintiffs that there is a categorical bar on public access to individual calendar or merits hearings at the Baton Rouge Immigration Court. To the extent these statements were made, “they do not accurately describe the hearing access rules at the Baton Rouge Immigration Court.”
Ashworth also notes that “security guards at the Baton Rouge Immigration Court are contractors under the Department of Homeland Security, not EOIR,” implying that the guards’ actions didn’t reflect court policy.
The DOJ likewise appears to be deflecting blame to the guards in Baton Rouge. ”The statements attributed to certain security guards at the court — individuals who are not EOIR employees — do not accurately state the court’s policy regarding public access to hearings,” reads the filing. The memorandum argues that the plaintiffs experienced only “sporadic denials of access,” including instances where “confusing or erroneous guidance was allegedly provided by court staff or security.”
The DOJ makes this claim despite Byland’s conversation with the judge and a separate declaration by Grush that she was denied access to individual hearings all 20 times she visited the court, by both security and court personnel.
In June, a front desk employee at the Baton Rouge Immigration Court also told a reporter from The Lens that members of the public were not permitted to attend individual hearings.
[Disclosure: The Lens reporter referenced above has submitted a declaration about what she was told in the Baton Rouge Immigration Court. It was filed with the D.C. court case on Friday. To avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, that reporter will not contribute to any further reporting regarding this matter.]
Despite email and DOJ claims, court access denials continued
Ashworth sent that email on Thursday, June 25. But on Monday, court watch volunteers still had issues getting into the Baton Rouge court.
The account of court watch volunteer Jami Prince, who had already been turned away nearly a dozen times, illustrates how the entire court, from staff to the judges themselves, seemed to be in consensus that the public would not be allowed in.
Prince attempted to attend an individual hearing on June 29, she said, and was initially told by front desk staff that she would not be allowed to attend.
Instead of leaving, she suggested that the employee look for the June 25 email from Ashworth stating that the hearings are open to the public. The employee looked up the email, printed it, read it aloud, and then gave Prince permission to proceed into the courtroom she wanted to observe.
In that courtroom, Courtroom Three, the judge and government attorney were present in person, while the respondent, his attorney, and the interpreter were attending virtually.
The judge, Romaine White, also tried to turn Prince away, saying, “I’m sorry, this is an individual hearing, you’re not allowed to observe.”
Again, Prince said, she pointed to the email from Ashworth.
White then relented, saying that Prince could stay —with the permission of the respondent. The respondent, an asylum seeker from Guatemala, gave his okay. Prince stayed and watched. White denied the man’s asylum claim.
It was the first individual hearing Prince had been allowed to attend. Since then, she said, members of the Court Watch group have generally been able to watch immigration hearings, with only “a few little bumps in the road.”
