By law, individuals undergoing U.S. immigration proceedings are provided by the government with interpreters, with more than 350 languages from all over the world available. These include the most widely spoken languages in the Americas and the world – Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, etc. However, in recent years, there has been a growing number of immigrants from Central America speaking only Indigenous languages, such as Mayan Mam, K'iche' and Q'anjob'al. These three languages, indigenous to Guatemala, are now among the top 25 most common languages spoken in immigration court. Many immigrants from Central American countries are asylum seekers, who have left their home communities due to ethnic, criminal, or gender-based violence.
The lack of interpreters and legal services offered in their native languages has led to many immigrants 'double exclusion', as the language barrier further compounds the already unjust and discriminatory immigration policies implemented by the U.S. government, according to Social Justice Collaborative (SJC), a nonprofit organization that works to protect the legal rights of immigrants and asylum seekers in the U.S.
