A LIFE WELL LIVED: R.I.P. JUDGE PATRICIA WALD 1928 – 2019 — “The truth is that life does change and the law must adapt to that inevitability.” — Rev. Bob Jones Once Called Her An “instrument of the devil.” — Can It Get Any Better Than That?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/patricia-wald-pathbreaking-federal-judge-who-became-chief-of-dc-circuit-dies-at-90/2019/01/12/6ab03904-1688-11e9-803c-4ef28312c8b9_story.html

Patricia Wald, pathbreaking federal judge who became chief of D.C. Circuit, dies at 90


President Barack Obama awards Judge Patricia Wald the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. (Evan Vucci/AP)

January 12 at 12:10 PM

Shortly before she graduated from Yale Law School in 1951, Patricia Wald secured a job interview with a white-shoe firm in Manhattan. The hiring partner was impressed with her credentials — she was one of two women on the law review — but lamented her timing.

“It’s really a shame,” she recalled the man saying. “If only you could have been here last week.” A woman had been hired then, she was told, and it would be a long time before the firm considered bringing another on board.

Gradually, working nights and weekends while raising five children, she built a career in Washington as an authority on bail reform and family law. Working for a pro bono legal services group and an early public-interest law firm, she won cases that broadened protections for society’s most vulnerable, including indigent women and children with special needs.

She became an assistant attorney general under President Jimmy Carter, who in 1979 appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — often described as the country’s most important bench after the U.S. Supreme Court. She was the first woman to serve on the D.C. Circuit and was its chief judge from 1986 to 1991. Later, she was a member of the United Nations tribunal on war crimes and genocide in the former Yugoslavia.

Judge Wald, whom Barack Obama called “one of the most respected appellate judges of her generation” when he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, died Jan. 12 at her home in Washington. She was 90.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said a son, Douglas Wald.


Judge Patricia Wald in 1999. (Michael Williamson/The Washington Post)
More than 800 opinions

On the D.C. Circuit, Judge Wald served on three-member panels that decided some of the most complicated legal disputes on the federal docket. She wrote more than 800 opinions during her tenure — many on technical matters involving separation of powers, administrative law and the environment — and she counted herself among the more liberal jurists, viewing the law as a tool to achieve social progress.

At the time, demonstrators regularly gathered outside the South African Embassy to shame the apartheid regime and outside the Nicaraguan and Soviet embassies to call attention to human rights violations. (The case was brought by conservative activists protesting Nicaragua’s radical left-wing Sandinista regime and the treatment of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.)

Writing for the majority, Judge Robert H. Bork cited the obligation of the United States to uphold the “dignity” of foreign governments. Judge Wald responded that the ruling “gouges out an enormously important category of political speech from First Amendment protection.”

Judge Wald played a small role in a long-running, high-profile case involving the Justice Department’s effort to break up the software giant Microsoft on the grounds of anti-competitive practices.

She dissented in 1998, when the court ruled that the company had not violated a consent decree regarding Microsoft’s bundling of its Internet browser with its Windows 95 operating system. She concurred with the government’s argument that bundling gave the software company’s browser an unfair advantage and could be financially harmful to competitors. (Microsoft and the Justice Department reached a settlement in 2002.)

In 1997, she delivered a unanimous opinion in a case growing out of a corruption probe involving Mike Espy, who served as agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton and was accused of accepting illegal gifts. In her opinion, one of the most cited executive-privilege cases since the Watergate era, Judge Wald broadened the scope of executive privilege to include the president’s senior advisers while noting that it was “not absolute” and could not be claimed in all circumstances.

In a speech at Yale in 1988, she likened judges on the appeals court to “monks or conjugal partners locked into a compulsory and often uneasy collegiality. . . . I constantly watch my colleagues in an effort to discern what it takes to be a good appellate judge: alertness, sensitivity to the needs of the system and one’s colleagues, raw energy, unselfishness, a healthy sense of history, some humility, a lively interest in the world outside the courthouse and what makes it tick.”

Summer jobs at the factory

Patricia Ann McGowan was born in the factory town of Torrington, Conn., on Sept. 16, 1928. She was 2 when her father, whom she called an alcoholic, abandoned the family. Her mother raised her with the help of relatives. They all worked at Torrington Co., which produced sewing and surgical needles and, during World War II, ball bearings.

She remembered working summers, as a teenager, at the factory, “up to my arms in ball-bearing grease.” The drudgery and her encounters with union activists sparked her interest in labor law.

In 1952, she married a Yale classmate, Robert L. Wald. After a stint clerking for a federal judge and working as an associate in a Washington law firm, she shifted her attention to her family for the next decade.

She did legal research projects on the side, collaborating with Daniel J. Freed, a Yale classmate and Justice Department lawyer, on “Bail in the United States — 1964,” a book credited with spurring the Bail Reform Act of 1966. That landmark legislation upended the bail system, which had left poor defendants little choice but to languish in jail before trial, by allowing defendants to be released without bond in certain noncapital cases. (The act was later watered down by preventive-detention laws.)

Judge Wald led a team that successfully argued in 1970 before the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court that the financial barrier was effectively an unconstitutional denial of access to the courts.

Judge Wald’s subsequent work for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a public-interest law firm, led to one of the first court decisions requiring that school districts provide an adequate education to the mentally and physically disabled.

Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.), citing an article she had written on the legal rights of children to seek without parental approval medical and psychiatric attention in extreme cases, accused her of being “anti-family.” Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bob Jones III, a fundamentalist preacher and president of Bob Jones University in South Carolina, called her an “instrument of the devil.”

Judge Wald liked to recall that a reporter approached her son Thomas, then in high school, for his reaction to his mother being called a minion of Lucifer. “Well, she burns the lamb chops,” Thomas replied, “but otherwise she’s okay.”

Her husband, who became a prominent Washington antitrust lawyer in private practice, died in 2010. Survivors include their children, Sarah Wald of Belmont, Mass., Douglas Wald of Bethesda, Md., Johanna Wald of Dedham, Mass., Frederica Wald of New York and Thomas Wald of Denver; 10 grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

Judge Wald was a former vice president of the American Law Institute, an organization of legal professionals. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, she participated in American Bar Association efforts to assist structural changes to the legal systems of former communist nations in Eastern Europe.

In 1999, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan named her one of 14 judges, from as many countries, to serve on the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.

She sat for two years on the now-defunct criminal court and was on the panel of judges that in 2001 convicted former Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic, the first person found guilty of genocide by the tribunal. The tribunal sentenced Krstic to 46 years in prison for his role in the slaughter of thousands of Muslim men and boys near Srebrenica in 1995. An appeals court later reduced the sentence to 35 years.

Judge Wald brought what the New York Times called a refreshing lack of pomp to the tribunal, often running down documents herself, instead of dispatching clerks to fetch them, leaving her office door open for visitors and taking her meals in a canteen where judges were seldom spotted.

She sat on many blue-ribbon panels and commissions. But she said she took particular pride in her role in an appellate decision involving a Naval Academy honor student, Joseph Steffan, who had been expelled because he was openly gay.

Judge Wald was part of the three-judge panel that unanimously ruled in 1993 that the armed forces could not make sexual orientation the sole criterion for expulsion. The Justice Department then asked for a rehearing by the full D.C. Circuit court, which in a 7-to-3 ruling — with Judge Wald dissenting — rejected Steffan’s readmission.

“You always have a sad feeling when you write a dissent because it means you lost,” Judge Wald said in an interview with a D.C. Bar publication. “But you write them because you have faith that maybe they will play out at some time in the future, and because of the integrity you owe to yourself. There are times when you need to stand up and say, ‘I can’t be associated with this point of view.’ That was certainly the way I felt in the gay midshipman case.”

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I knew Judge Wald back in the Carter Administration when she was the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the DOJ and I was the Deputy General Counsel of the “Legacy INS.” I was working for then General Counsel David Crosland, now Judge Crosland of the Baltimore Immigration Court. Part of my “portfolio” was the INS Legislative Program. Judge Wald’s “right hand man” on immigration legislation was my friend the late Jack Perkins who later went on to a distinguished career as a Senior Executive at EOIR.
I remember Judge Wald as wise, courteous, congenial, humane, practical, and supportive.  She was also a long-time friend of the late former EOIR Director Kevin D. Rooney who was then the Assistant Attorney General for Administration.
My favorite Judge Wald quote from this obit was the last one:
“You always have a sad feeling when you write a dissent because it means you lost,” Judge Wald said in an interview with a D.C. Bar publication. “But you write them because you have faith that maybe they will play out at some time in the future, and because of the integrity you owe to yourself. There are times when you need to stand up and say, ‘I can’t be associated with this point of view.’ That was certainly the way I felt in the gay midshipman case.”
Yup, I can certainly relate to that.
R.I.P. Judge Wald.
PWS
01-13-19

READ MY SPEECH TO THE ABA COMMISSION ON IMMIGRATION: “CARICATURE OF JUSTICE: Stop The Attack On Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, and Human Decency In Our Captive, Dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Courts!”

CARICATURE OF JUSTICE:

Stop The Attack On Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, and Human Decency In Our Captive, Dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Courts

 

ABA COMMISISON ON IMMIGRATION

         WASHINGTON, D.C.

MAY 4, 2018

 

Thank you, Madam Moderator. I am pleased to be on this distinguished panel. And, I am particularly delighted that EOIR Director James McHenry has joined us.

 

Clearly, this isn’t about Director McHenry, who by my calculations was still in law school when the wheels began coming off the EOIR wagon. Also, as a former Senior Executive in past Administrations of both parties, I’m familiar with being sent out to “defend the party line” which sometimes proved to be “mission impossible.”

 

For me, no more disclaimers, no more bureaucratic BS, no more sugar coating, no more “party lines.” I’m going to “tell it like it is” and what you need to do to reestablish Due Processand fundamental fairnessas the only acceptable missionof the United States Immigration Courts.

 

It’s still early in the morning, but as Toby Keith would say, “It’s me, baby, with your wakeup call!”

 

Nobody, not even Director McHenry, can fix thissystem while it remains under the control of the DOJ. The support, meaningful participation, and ideas of the judges and staff who work within it and the public,particularly the migrants and their lawyers, who rely on it, is absolutely essential.

 

But, the current powers that be at the DOJ have effectively excludedthe real stakeholdersfrom the process. Worse,they have blamed the victims,you, the stakeholders, for the very problems created by political meddling at the DOJ. We’re on a path “designed and destined for failure.”

 

The decline of the Due Process mission at EOIR spans several Administrations. But, recently, it has accelerated into freefallas the backlog largely created by “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) by political officials at the DOJ over the past several Administrations and chronic understaffing have stripped U.S. Immigration Judges of all effective control over their dockets, made them appear feckless, and undermined public confidence in the fairness, independence, and commitment to individual Due Process of our Immigration Courts.

 

The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment is there for one, and only one reason. To protect all individuals in the United States, not just citizens, from abuses by the Federal Government. In simple terms, it protects individuals appearing in Immigration Court from overstepping and overzealous enforcement actions by the DHS. It is notthere to insure either maximum removals by the DHS or satisfaction of all DHS enforcement goals.

 

Nor is it there to “send messages” – other than the message that individuals arriving in the United States regardless of statuswill be treated fairly and humanely. It serves solely to protect the rights of the individual, and definitelynotto fulfill the political agenda of any particular Administration.

 

The “EOIR vision” which a group of us in Senior Management developed under the late Director Kevin Rooney was to “be the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Sadly, that noble vision is now dead and buried.

 

In fact, when I mentioned it to a recently hired EOIR attorney just prior to my retirement in 2016, she looked at me as if I were from outer space. Indeed, nobody in his or her right mind would seriously suggestthat today’s Immigration Courts are on track to meet that vision or that it motivates the actions of today’s DOJ.

 

No, instead, the Department of Justice’s ever-changing priorities, Aimless Docket Reshuffling, and morbid fascinationwith increased immigration detention as a means of deterrence have turned our Immigration Court system back into a tool of DHS enforcement. Obviously, it is long past time for an independentU.S. Immigration Court to be established outside the Executive Branch.

 

I work with a group of retired colleagues on various Amicus Briefs trying to defend and restore the concept of Due Process in Immigration Court. I doubt that it’s what any of us thought we’d be doing in retirement. As one of those colleagues recently said, it’s truly heartbreaking for those of us who devoted large segments of our professional lives to improving Due Process and fairness in the Immigration Courts to see what has become of those concepts and how they are being mocked and trashed on a daily basis in our Immigration Court system.

 

Those of us watching from retirement treat each day’s EOIR news with a mixture of disbelief, disappointment, anger, and total outrage. But, it drives and inspires us to actionto halt and reverse the travesty of justice now taking place in our US Immigration Courts.

 I am one of the very few living participants in the 1983 creation of EOIR when it was spun off from the “legacy INS” to create judicial independence and better court administration during the Reagan Administration.

And, I can assure you that the Reagan Administration was not filled with “knee jerk liberal.” No, those were tough, but fair minded and practical, law enforcement officials. The other “survivors” who come to mind are former Director and BIA Judge Tony Moscato and then Associate Attorney General Rudy Giuliani, whom I understand is “otherwise occupied” these days.

Sadly, although EOIR appeared to have prospered for a period of time after its creation, it has now regressedto essentially the same problematic state it was in prior to 1983: lack of actual and perceived judicial independence; a weak appellate board that fails to function as an independent judiciary promoting due process; an unwieldy structure, poor administrative support, and outdated technology; a glacial one-sided judicial selection process that effectively has eliminated private sector attorneys with actual experience in representing immigrants and asylum applicants in court from the 21stCentury Immigration Judiciary; and an overwhelming backlog with no end in sight.

Only now, the backlog is multiples of what it was back in 1983, nearing an astounding 700,000 cases! And additional problemshave arisen, including grotesque overuse of detention courts in obscure, inappropriate locations to discourage representation and inhibit individuals from fully exercising their legal rights; a lack of pro bono and low bono attorney resources; and new unprecedented levelsof open disdain and disrespect by Administration officials outside EOIR, at the DOJ, for the two groups that are keeping Due Process afloat in the Immigration Courts: private attorneys, particularly those of you who are pro bono and low bono attorneys representing vulnerable asylum applicants and the Immigration Judgesthemselves, who are demeaned by  arrogant, ignorant officials in the DOJ who couldn’t do an Immigration Judge’s job if their lives depended on it.  

But, wait, and I can’t make this stuff up, folks, it gets even worse! According to recent news reports, the DOJ is actually looking for ways to artificially “jack up” the backlog to over 1,000,000 cases – you heard me, one million cases– almost overnight. They can do this by taking cases that were properly “administratively closed” and removed from the Courts’ already overwhelmed “active dockets” and adding them to the backlog.

Administratively closed cases involve individuals who probably never should have been in proceedings in the first place – DACA recipients, TPS recipients, those waiting in line for U visa numbers, potential legal immigrants with applications pending at USCIS, and long-time law-abiding residents who work, pay taxes, are integrated into our communities, have family equities in the United States, and were therefore quite properly found to be low to non-existent “enforcement priorities” by the last Administration.

Some of you in the audience might be in one of these groups. They are your neighbors, friends, fellow-students, co-workers, fellow worshippers, employees, workmen, child care workers, and home care professionals., and other essential members of our local communities.

And you can bet, that rather than taking responsibility for this unnecessary cruelty, waste, fraud, and abuse of our court system, the DOJ will attempt to falsely shift blame to Immigration Judges and private attorneys like those of you in the audience who are engaged in the thankless job of defending migrants in the toxic atmosphere intentionally created by this Administration and its antics.

Expose this scam! Don’t let the DOJ get away with this type of dishonest and outrageous conduct aimed at destroying our Immigration Court system while disingenuously directing the blame elsewhere.

Basically, respondents’ attorneys and Immigration Judges have been reduced to the role of “legalgerbilson an ever faster moving treadmill” governed by the unrestrained whims and indefensible, inhumane “terror creating” so-called “strategies” of the DHS enforcement authorities. And, instead of supportingour Immigration Judges in their exercise of judicial independence and unbiased decision-making and nurturing and enhancing the role of the private attorneys, the DOJ, inexcusably, during this Administration has undercut them in every possible way.

For the last 16 years politicians of both parties have largely stood by and watched the unfolding Due Process disaster in the U.S. Immigration Courts without doing anything about it, and in some cases actually making it worse. 

 

The notion that Immigration Court reform must be part of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” is simply wrong. The Immigration Courts can and must be fixed sooner rather than later, regardless of what happens with overall immigration reform. It’s time to let your Senators and Representatives know that we need due process reforms in the Immigration Courts as one of our highest national priorities

 

Folks, the U.S Immigration Court system is on the verge of collapse. And, there is every reason to believe that the misguided “enforce and detain to the max” policies being pursued by this Administration, at levels over which Director McHenry has no realistic control, will drive the Immigration Courts over the edge. When that happens, a large chunk of the entire American justice system and the due process guarantees that make American great and different from most of the rest of the world will go down with it.

 

Our Constitution and our protection laws, which adhere to international treaties that we have signed, are not“loopholes.” Treating migrants fairly, humanely, and in accordance with the rule of law does notshow “weakness.” It shows our strengthas a nation.

 

There is a bogus narrative being spread by this Administration that refugees who are fleeing for their lives from dangerous situations in the Northern Triangle, that we had a hand in creating, are mere “economic migrants” not deserving of our protection. Untrue!

 

Migrants should be given a reasonable chance to get lawyers; an opportunity to prepare, document, and present their cases in a non-coercive setting; access to a truly independent, unbiased judge who is committed to guaranteeing individual rights and the fair application of U.S. protection laws in the generous spirit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Cardoza-Fonsecaand the BIA’s oft cited but seldom followed precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi; and a fair decision, preferably in writing, without being placed under duress by unnecessary, wasteful, inhumane detention and separation of families. This Court System should not be run by a Cabinet Member who has already announced his predetermination of the preferred outcomes and his total disdain for migrants and their lawful representatives.

 

Once fully documented, many of these cases probably could be granted either as asylum cases or as withholding of removal cases under the CAT in short hearings or by stipulation if the law were applied in a fair and unbiased manner. Those who don’t qualify for protection after a fair and impartial adjudication, and a chance to appeal administratively and to the Article III Courts, can be returned under the law.

 

This Administration and particularly this DOJ depend on individuals notbeing competently represented and therefore not being able to assert their rights to either legal status or fair treatment. But, there are still real,truly independent Article III Courts out there that can intervene and put an end to this “deportation railroad” and its trampling on our Constitution, our laws, our values, and our dignity as human beings. For, friends, if we are unwilling to stand up against tyranny and protect the legal and Constitutional rights of the most vulnerable among us, like asylum seekers, then our ownrights and liberties as Americans mean nothing!

 

I urge each of youin this audience to join the “New Due Process Army” and stand upfor “truth, justice, and the American way” in our failing, misused, and politically abused United States Immigration Courts and to continue the fight, for years or decades if necessary, until this systemfinally is forced to deliveron its noble but unfulfilled promise of “being the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Harm to one is harm to all! Due process forever!

 

Thank you, Madam Moderator, I yield back my time.

 

(04-04-18)

*********************************

ADMISSION: Notwithstanding the last sentence, I went “overtime,” so there actually was no time to “yield back.”

PWS

05-04-18

 

 

 

KATHERINE M. REILLY NAMED ACTING DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF EOIR — Also, My “Mini-History” Of EOIR Directors

Here’s the official DOJ press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, July 3, 2017

Executive Office for Immigration Review Announces New Acting Deputy Director

FALLS CHURCH, VA – The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) today announced the appointment of Katherine H. Reilly as the agency’s Acting Deputy Director. Ms. Reilly has served as Chief Counsel of the Employee and Labor Relations Unit within EOIR’s Office of General Counsel since December 2013.

“Katherine’s varied and impressive legal experience makes her well-suited for assuming the position of Acting Deputy Director at EOIR, especially during this important time when we are mobilizing all of our resources to combat a growing caseload,” said Acting Director James McHenry. “The skills she has acquired as a manager and through her work in employee and labor relations are critical for the agency, both to meet its current challenges and to establish effective policies and procedures for the future.”

In her new capacity as Acting Deputy Director, Ms. Reilly will supervise EOIR’s components and will be responsible for assisting in leading the agency in formulating and administering policies and strategies which enhance EOIR’s effectiveness in fulfilling its core mission of adjudicating cases fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly

Katherine H. Reilly joined EOIR in December 2013 as Chief Counsel of the Employee and Labor Relations Unit within the Office of General Counsel. Prior to her tenure with EOIR, she was the Director of Legal Services for the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, managing that agency’s employee relations team, civil litigation section, and contracting division. Ms. Reilly also served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for criminal prosecutions in the Northern District of Texas. She began her career with the Federal Trade Commission as an antitrust attorney and also worked for a law firm, advising corporate clients on antitrust and commercial litigation. Ms. Reilly received her Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and earned a Master of Laws degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Ms. Reilly is a member of the District of Columbia and Virginia bars.

**************************************************

Congratulations, good luck and best wishes to Acting Deputy Director Reilly.

And, here’s my “Mini-History of EOIR Directors:”

EOIR MINI-HISTORY: DIRECTORS AND DEPUTY-DIRECTORS

by Paul Wickham Schmidt

U.S. Immigration Judge (Retired) & Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown Law

 

When EOIR was created within the DOJ in 1983, it merged the previously “stand-alone” Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) with the Immigration Judges, who were previously part of the “Legacy” Immigration and Naturalization Service “INS”). David Milhollan, who was then the Chairman of the BIA also (somewhat reluctantly) became EOIR’s first Director, while retaining his position as Chair, thereby effectively merging the positions of Director and Chair.

 

Upon Milhollan’s retirement, in 1995 the positions were separated to increase the decisional independence of the BIA. For awhile, Jack Perkins, then Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, served as Acting Director. Attorney General Janet Reno named long-time DOJ Senior Executive Anthony C “Tony” Moscato, who had most recently served as the Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the second Director. I was appointed to the now separate position of BIA Chair. Moscato and I had significant roles in the 1983 creation of EOIR.

 

Moscato, noting the growth of EOIR’s functions, recommended the creation of the position of EOIR Deputy Director. Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Kevin D. Rooney as the first Deputy Director. Rooney had served as the Assistant Attorney General for Administration during several Administrations and was in private practice at the time of his appointment.

 

Eventually, Moscato sought and received appointment as a BIA Member. (Thereby going from my “immediate supervisor” to my “direct subordinate,” although these terms make little sense in the EOIR context because neither the Director nor the Chairman has authority to direct the decision-making of Board Members). Rooney succeeded Moscato as the third Director. Then EOIR General Counsel Peg Philbin became the Deputy Director.

 

Philbin served as Acting Director while Rooney was the Acting Commissioner of the INS for a few months during the Bush Administration (uh, talk about conflicts and perceptions, but that really wasn’t a strong point for the Bush II Administration either), but she eventually left EOIR to become a Senior Executive at the State Department. Then Board Member Kevin Ohlson replaced her as Deputy Director. Upon Rooney’s retirement, Deputy Director Ohlson succeeded him as the fourth Director. Ohlson had also held a number of Senior Executive positions within the DOJ prior to his brief stint as a Board Member.

 

When Eric Holder became Attorney General, Ohlson left EOIR to become his Chief of Staff. After some time, during which Judge Thomas Snow served as Acting Director, Juan P. Osuna, then a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division, became the fifth Director. Osuna had also been BIA Chair, BIA Vice Chair, and a Board Member. Ana M. Kocur, then a BIA staff supervisor, was selected to be Osuna’s Deputy.

 

Upon the departure of Osuna and Kocur in May 2017, both the top executive positions in EOIR became vacant. Interestingly, while two former BIA Chairs, Milhollan and Osuna, became Directors, EOIR has never had a Director who had served as a U.S. Immigration Judge at the trial level of the system, although the Immigration Judge program is by far the largest “adjudicating component” of EOIR.

 

Also, no former Immigration Judge has ever held the Deputy Director position. However, as noted above, one current Immigration Judge, Judge Thomas Snow, held the position of Acting Director during the interim between Ohlson’s departure and Osuna’s appointment. Snow, a former top executive in the DOJ’s Criminal Division before his appointment to the bench, was well regarded and well liked by the sitting Immigration Judges. Reportedly, he was offered the position on a permanent basis, but turned it down to return to the Arlington Immigration Court bench where he remains (thus having “outlasted” Osuna).

 

The Director is an unusual position in that as a non-judicial official, he or she is specifically excluded from having any substantive role in EOIR’s sole function: quasi-judicial adjudication. In a future, better-functioning, independent U.S. Immigration Court system, the Chief Appellate Judge (now BIA Chair) would resume the formal role as administrative head of the judicial system, along the lines of the relationship between the Chief Justice and the rest of the Article III Judiciary. The “Director” position would become the “Executive Director of the Administrative Office” subordinate to the Chief Appellate Judge.

 

With the elimination of the inherently political role of the DOJ in the U.S. Immigration Court system, there no longer would be a need to for the largely fictional perception that the “Director” serves as a “buffer” between the “adjudicating components” and the political and litigation officials at the DOJ. The current problems of the U.S. Immigration Court well illustrate the insurmountable difficulties of attempting to run one of the nation’s largest and most important court systems as an “agency” of a political department. Even if the DOJ had the will to allow the Immigration Courts to function independently, it lacks the competence and expertise in court administration to successfully support such a system.

 

The only real question is when will Congress finally face reality and create a truly independent and properly functioning U.S. Immigration court system?

 

PWS

07-06-17