By Ana Rodriguez Soto - The Archdiocese of Miami

MIAMI | Imagine a 2-year-old facing a judge � without a lawyer.

Randy McGrorty doesn�t have to. He�s seen it. So have the other attorneys who gathered for a press conference Aug. 1 at the archdiocesan Pastoral Center. They are working desperately to represent the unaccompanied minors who have been arriving in this country in increasing numbers for the past two years.

The attorneys, along with Archbishop Thomas Wenski, were protesting the fact that their already difficult work has just been made impossible. The Justice Department issued an order this month expediting the cases of any minor who arrived in the U.S. as of May 1, 2014.

The result: As of July 31, three Miami immigration judges have set aside their regular dockets to hear 150 cases a day � that is 50 cases per judge, per seven-hour workday. Similar situations are playing out nationwide. The immigration courts� 228 fulltime judges already are handling a load of more than 375,000 cases, and the average wait for a decision is 587 days.

McGrorty, executive director of Catholic Legal Services, called the Justice Department�s order an �artificial crisis� created for �political show.� He said he suspected it came not from the Justice Department but from �very high in the White House� and blasted the Obama administration for �using kids as political messengers.�

Archbishop Wenski pointed out that there is no need to rush to judgment, since these children �are not really costing the government any money.� Nearly all of them have been turned over to the care of relatives.

Just as �justice delayed is justice denied,� the archbishop said, in this case �justice expedited is also justice denied.�

�We�re not saying that every child will have to stay in the U.S. What we�re saying is that what we do should be about the best interest of the child,� Archbishop Wenski said. �What we should not do is short-circuit this by making a travesty of the immigration system.�

�Just when we thought things couldn�t get any worse � they did,� said Cheryl Little, executive director of Americans for Immigrant Justice. Her attorneys represented 1,600 unaccompanied minors at immigration hearings last year � and a similar number so far this year.

She noted that these children are �fleeing to save their lives.�

Nearly all the protagonists of the current crisis at the border are coming from Honduras � �the murder capital of the world,� Little said � along with El Salvador and Guatemala, countries that are viewed as among the five most dangerous in the world.

She noted that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 60 percent of these children can make a case for �relief from deportation.� Issuing deportation orders in these cases �is tantamount to a virtual death sentence,� Little said.

�The immigration courts are extremely overburdened already,� said Jacob Ratzan, president of the Florida chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. �It�s all happening too fast. Too fast for children to get counsel. Too fast for children to get notice of deportation proceedings.�

�This is a humanitarian crisis and it needs to be dealt with in a humanitarian way,� he added.