Tag: immigration judges
Rather than encourage the new class of 44 immigration judges to be fair and impartial adjudicators in his Monday morning speech, Attorney General Jeff Sessions advocated for a deeply flawed immigration court system and directed judges to carry out the Trump administration’s punitive, anti-immigration agenda. While many would have taken the opportunity to reinforce principles […]
Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a decision on continuances in immigration court that both recognized their importance and decried their alleged overuse. This decision will have widespread implications for immigration court process. The case, Matter of L-A-B-R-, addresses circumstances under which an immigration judge can continue a case so a person in removal proceedings may […]
The Trump administration is working hard to undermine the asylum system through additional and unnecessary barriers, making it more difficult for those seeking refuge in the United States to be granted asylum. This is an ominous trend given that the U.S. government’s decision to either grant or reject an asylum request can be a life-or-death […]
In a controversial move, the Department of Justice recently announced new case completion quotas for immigration judges. These new quotas will result in time constraints and pressure for judges to reach decisions quickly, impacting individuals’ ability to have a fair day in court. The Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the DOJ component that runs […]
In a sharp departure from the practice of immigration courts around the country, immigration judges in North Carolina are refusing to conduct bond hearings for detained immigrants who come before the Charlotte Immigration Court. This unlawful, alarming, and unconscionable practice deprives noncitizens of their basic due process rights.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly intending to implement numerical quotas on Immigration Judges as a way of evaluating their performance. This move would undermine judicial independence, threaten the integrity of the immigration court system, and cause massive due process violations. As it currently stands, Immigration Judges are not rated based on the number […]
For more than a decade, the immigration court system has struggled with an enormous backlog. The latest figures from (TRAC) record the backlog at an all-time high of 521,676 as of the end of October, the first month in Fiscal Year (FY) 2017. The data release coincides with reports of President-Elect Donald Trump’s plan for […]
This summer, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) in its lawsuit seeking the disclosure of unredacted versions of complaints filed against immigration judges. To date, the government has refused to turn over the names, locations, and genders of immigration judges against whom complaints […]
The latest figures show that the number of cases pending in immigration court continue to grow. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), there were 486,206 cases in the backlog as of the end of March. This is almost 30,000 more pending cases than Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) Director Juan Osuna reported […]
Last Tuesday, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a case filed by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), which seeks the disclosure of unredacted versions of complaints filed against immigration judges and related documents. To date, the government has refused to turn over the names, locations and genders of […]
