Joe Davidson – immigrationcourtside.com

🤐 “McNULTY UKASE” DRAWS HARSH CRITICISM FROM OSC, HILL, CONTINUES TO ROIL GARLAND’S DOJ! 🤯

"Gagged" — “Gagged”
Garland’s DOJ has taken extreme steps to stop Immigration Judges from publicly criticizing his dysfunctional Immigration Courts!
PHOTO: Public Domain via Creative Commons

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/12/gag-orders-federal-workers-whistleblowers-nda/

Joe Davidson, “Federal Insider,” from p. 2 of today’s WashPost (print edition):

. . . .

In a February email to New York-based immigration Judge Mimi Tsankov, the union president, and Judge Samuel Cole, the union’s executive vice president in Chicago, Sheila McNulty, the chief immigration judge in the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), said they are prohibited from making public statements “without supervisory approval and any Speaking Engagement Team review your supervisor believes necessary.”

That warning came after Tsankov in October told a Senate Judiciary immigration subcommittee hearing that “Democrat and Republican administrations share the failure of the DOJ’s immigration court management,” saying “immigration courts have faced structural deficiencies, crushing caseloads, and unacceptable backlogs for many years.” Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), NAIJ’s parent union, cited Tsankov’s congressional testimony as an example of giving “judges a voice” that’s now silenced.

McNulty referred to a controversial and hotly contested Trump administration action that led to the decertification of the immigration judges’ union, when she wrote “any bargaining agreement … that may have existed previously is not valid at present.”

On Nov. 2, 2020, the day before Trump, who waged war on federal unions, lost his reelection bid, the Federal Labor Relations Authority ruled that immigration judges are management employees precluded from union representation. That means, according to McNulty, they cannot speak out as union leaders because she considers their association to be a “group” and not a recognized labor organization. IFPTE has asked the Biden administration to reverse the immigration review office’s “inappropriate and misguided application of the agency speaking engagement policy.”

This must be an embarrassment to proudly pro-union President Biden, who reversed other anti-federal labor organization policies put in place under Trump.

McNulty’s action drew heated reaction from three Republicans who often vote against union interests. “The Committee takes seriously the Department’s effort to silence immigration judges,” wrote Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee and its immigration subcommittee, respectively. In a letter to the attorney general, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said any effort “to silence immigration judges … is absolutely unacceptable.”

Grassley also noted that McNulty’s order “failed to include the anti-gag provision as required by law.”

That’s a key point in the Office of Special Counsel’s notice.

. . . .

[IFPTE President Matt] Biggs called the Justice Department office’s policy “an outrageous act of censure and an attack on freedom of the press and transparency.”

“Intentionally or not,” he added, the directive “resulted in a not-so-subtle message to rank-and-file immigration judges to think carefully before talking to congressional lawmakers as whistleblowers or otherwise.”

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Hon. Mimi Tsankov
President, NAIJ — She “blew the whistle” on the continuing “bipartisan due process mess at EOIR” during recent Congressional testimony. Her “DOJ handlers” were not amused!

Read Joe’s complete column at the above link.

Both Parties, Congress, the Executive, and the Article III Courts share blame for the current untenable mess at EOIR, where Due Process, fundamental fairness, quality control, expertise, and practical efficiency are mere afterthoughts, at best! Although there is no sign that it will happen in the near future, the answer is clear and has been for decades: Congress must put aside partisan differences, stop “jockeying for advantage,” and create an independent Article I Immigration Court with a merit-based selection system for judges and professional court administration. Then, let the system work and the chips fall where they may!

You can’t “run” a court system like a “Vatican-style” bureaucratic agency! How many times does that have to be proved for Congress to finally act? Yes, it’s a “big deal!’ Probably the biggest, most widely ignored, most achievable, most important (millions of lives and futures are literally at stake here) piece of solving the “immigration puzzle!”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-13-24

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼🏆👏🏽GOOD GOVERNMENT: BELEAGUERED FEDS WOULD FIND WELCOME RESPITE IN BIDEN ADMINISTRATION! — This Election Could Be “Last Call” For One Of The Cornerstones Of Our Democracy — A Competent, Honest, Career Civil Service!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-federal-workers-unions/2020/08/26/62595932-e71c-11ea-a414-8422fa3e4116_story.html

Joe Davidson reports for WashPost:

If Joe Biden is elected president, he promises to overturn President Trump’s aggression against federal employee unions, support regular pay raises for federal employees and protect their workplace rights.

Biden, the Democratic nominee, has pledged to upend Trump’s actions concerning federal labor organizations on Inauguration Day in January. Trump’s assaults were codified in three executive orders he issued in 2018. They systematically undermined the ability of unions to represent not only their members, but all employees in agency collective-bargaining units.

Saying Trump “has loosed a direct attack on our members’ union rights and dignity on the job,” the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) questionnaire to Biden outlines policies the largest federal union wants reversed.

“This includes purging lawful representational activity from government worksites and equipment, weaponizing the bargaining process to propose, and in some cases impose, one-sided contracts, attacking our statutory right to collect voluntary dues, crippling our ability to mediate disputes on duty time, and more,” says the questionnaire’s introduction. “Taken together, these attacks constitute more than just a threat to our members’ livelihoods, they threaten the survival of the merit-based civil service system on which our government is built.”

AFGE endorsed Biden last month. In two internal polls, AFGE said its members supported Biden over Trump by more than 30 points.

The first question asked Biden to commit to overturning the executive orders and other directives that weaken employee due process and collective bargaining rights “on your first day in office.” Biden agreed and said “the federal government should serve as a role model for employers to treat their workers fairly.”

“On my first day in office,” he added, “I will restore federal employees’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, restore their right to official time, and direct agencies to bargain with federal employee unions.” Official time allows union leaders to represent employees, including those who are not union members, in grievance procedures and matters involving issues such as workplace safety and productivity, while being paid by the government.

[If he gets a presidential Day 1, Biden has a nearly endless list of ways to spend it]

In addition to Biden’s answers, the Democratic Party Platform promises to “strengthen labor rights for the more than 20 million public-sector employees” at all levels by supporting legislation that would “provide a federal guarantee for public-sector employees to bargain for better pay and benefits and the working conditions they deserve.”

While Trump has been relentless in his federal union offensive, all was not copacetic when Biden served as Barack Obama’s vice president. Government workers vehemently opposed three federal pay freezes imposed under Obama, with congressional approval, during an era of budget tightening.

But the Obama-Biden administration did not seek to fundamentally undermine unions as Trump has done or diminish federal workers. Obama’s stated effort to “make government cool again” contrasts sharply with Trump’s “drain the swamp” attitude toward government. Trump did not respond to AFGE’s questionnaire.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.

Just another instance where Biden is going to have to separate himself from some misguided, occasionally weak-kneed and shortsighted, Obama-era policies and establish himself as his own man, with a decidedly more practical, aware, and progressive approach. And, as a long-time public servant himself (albeit an elected one) — whose career has in many ways been built and furthered by the skills, expertise, and contributions of civil servants in all branches of Government — I believe he is up to the task. Indeed, he might well be the best-qualified candidate in my lifetime to save and enhance our now reeling and crumbling civil service — one of the “crown jewels” of American democracy now under unrelenting assault from a thoroughly corrupt Trump and his GOP nihilist “wrecking crew.”

For example, look at how the cowardly and totally unethical “Billy the Bigot” Barr tried to “punish” Judge Ashley Tabaddor and the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”) (disclosure: I am a proud retired member) for speaking “truth to power.” As the only ones authorized to speak out on behalf of Immigration Judges (regardless of membership in the NAIJ), Judge Tabaddor and other NAIJ officials exposed the massive corruption, gross mismanagement, improper politicization, and medically dangerous working conditions at EOIR! As a result, Billy tried to silence her and the NAIJ by filing a frivolous action to “decertify” the NAIJ based on bogus reasons, many rejected by the FLRA in the past. This abuse of Government resources and process by Billy has since been dismissed after hearing by a FLRA official, as previously reported in “Courtside.”

As a civil servant for more than 35 years, serving in Administrations of both parties, at levels from “worker bee” to “Senior Exec,” and a veteran of 21 years on both levels of the Immigration Bench (when it actually more resembled a “real court” than the ridiculous parody engineered by Gonzo Apocalypto and Billy the Bigot), I know what I’m speaking about.

Incidentally, I was one of the “founding brothers and sisters” of the BIA employees’ union in the 1970s, and then went on to battle that same union before the FLRA during my tenure as BIA Chair in the late 1990s. So, like many issues in immigration during my career, I understand both sides.

But, I never questioned the BIA union’s authority to speak for the staff. In most ways, it was a good “focal point” for getting important issues out in the open and resolving them, even if the process was occasionally contentious and frustrating. And, I’d have to admit to getting some good ideas on management improvements from union officials. So good, in fact, that I actually hired some of them to become staff managers at the BIA.

Over my career, I was involved in thousands of asylum and refugee cases, many of them successful. Many were fleeing countries with great progressive “paper constitutions” and sometimes even very “facially reasonable” statutory law. A number of these countries had even signed the U.N. Refugee Convention. What often made these countries “persecutors” as opposed to “protectors” was in the “execution” rather than the “black letter law.”

Two characteristics that many of these persecutors had in common were: 1) an authoritarian executive who controlled a corrupt civil service usually “on the take,” staffed with family members, tribe members, or “party regulars,” and personally loyal to the leader rather than the constitution and statutes; and 2) “courts” that were either instruments of the leader and his tribe or party or too feckless to stand up against executive tyranny.

Under Trump and his corrupt GOP cronies, the US is well on its way to this type of “banana republic” public service in all three branches. And, don’t thank that a healthy economy or a robust stock market are “proof” against tyranny. Today’s China, as well as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, are prime examples of how “economic success and power” do not necessarily equate with good government, equality, or lack of repression.

This November, vote like your life and the future of our democracy depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

08-26|-20

TRUMP REGIME’S DISHONEST BATTLE TO “SNUFF” NAIJ SHOWS CONTEMPT FOR UNIONS, WORKING PEOPLE, CAREER EMPLOYEES, DUE PROCESS, FAIRNESS, MIGRANTS, JUDICIARY, & AMERICAN VALUES ALL WRAPPED INTO ONE VILE PACKAGE!

Joe Davidson
Federal Employment Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-has-attacked-federal-unions-now-for-the-first-time-hes-trying-to-bust-one/2020/01/17/3426d8ea-3971-11ea-a01d-b7cc8ec1a85d_story.html

By

Joe Davidson

Columnist

Jan. 18, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EST

President Trump is escalating his attacks on federal unions to a new level.

For the first time, the Trump administration is seeking to bust a union, the National Association of Immigration Judges, by declaring that its members are managers ineligible for labor organization membership. It’s tantamount to decertification.

A possible change in the judges’ status from staffers to managers raises another issue beyond union membership: Should judges be part of the Justice Department, the law enforcement agency whose cases the judges consider?

Making immigration judges part of the department’s management could politicize their role during a period when Trump’s aggressive immigration practices are among his more controversial policies.

This case intensifies a series of administration actions designed to undermine federal labor organizations. The most notable of those occurred in May 2018 when Trump issued three executive orders that hit federal unions by, among other things, making it harder for union leaders to organize, represent employees and use agency facilities.

Arguments from both sides of the attempted union busting are now being considered by the Federal Labor Relations Authority, a small independent agency that resolves federal labor-management disputes. Two of the three authority members are Trump appointees.

Justice Department officials say the judges are essentially management officials “and should be excluded from a bargaining unit” in papers filed this month with the authority.

The department is fighting history, hoping it does not repeat.

In 2000, when Bill Clinton was president, the authority considered the same issue and, as the administration’s brief acknowledges, “determined that immigration judges are not management officials.”

So why re-fight a lost battle?

Justice officials now contend that decision “was wrongly decided” and has been undermined by changes in the law that affect immigration judges’ decisions.

Administrative decisions and federal court rulings since the authority’s 2000 decision, according to Justice, significantly influence “the ability of immigration judges to determine, formulate, or influence policy of the Agency,” rendering them more management than labor.

A decision by an immigration judge, the brief added, “commits or binds the Agency to a course of action,” a characteristic of management. Currently there are 465 immigration judges, the most ever, according to the department.

The association, however, says not only have the judges’ duties not changed since the earlier decision, but they are “less able to influence policy” than they were then.

“Immigration Judges are now subject to mandatory performance reviews and efficiency metrics,” the association said in its brief. “The Agency has increased control over the procedures and protocols of the judges’ courtrooms. It has implemented a restrictive public speaking policy, blocking judges from many speaking engagements,” the union’s brief said.

On top of that, agency managers “are frequently in the courthouses, supervising and evaluating the Immigration Judges. These changes give the judges yet less authority than before, showing that the Agency clearly treats them as employees.”

The judges have important allies.

When the union hit was proposed last year, a statement by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and immigration subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said the administration “has taken unprecedented steps to strip immigration judges of judicial independence.”

The union-busting attempt, they added, “underscores why we need an immigration court system that is separate and independent from the Executive Branch.” The committee leaders planned a hearing on creation of an independent immigration court.

During an interview, union president A. Ashley Tabaddor said housing the current immigration court in the Justice Department is a “major structural design defect” whose conflicts of interest, vulnerabilities and weaknesses have been particularly exploited under Trump.

She likened the immigration courts under him to a “widget factory model process [where] the judges have been subjected to quotas and deadlines, which intrudes upon their decision-making authority. The court system has been micromanaged from the top based on law enforcement priority.”

Busting the union would be “a dark day not only for every immigrant who appears before the immigration court, but also for the deeply [held] American principle that courts must be balanced and neutral in order to administer justice,” according to an email from Gregory Chen, the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s government relations director.

If the union is busted, he said, “There will be no voice that speaks for the judges, and the administration will have unchecked power to pressure the courts to serve as a tool of enforcement rather than justice.”

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

As Due Process and fundamental fairness die in America, all of us are losers. And, the Trump regime is making a concerted effort to dismember every American institution that protects constitutional rights and due process for all.

PWS

01-20-20

FOLLOWING WEEK OF FOREIGN POLICY BLUNDERS, TRUMP AND GOP RIGHT TARGET A NEW “ENEMY” – AMERICA! – KAKISTOCRACY SEEKS TO DESTROY MERIT-BASED CIVIL SERVICE & RE-ESTABLISH SPOILS SYSTEM, POLITICAL CRONYISM, AND TOADYISM AS HALLMARKS OF “GOVERNMENT BY THE WORST” — Trump’s Latest Lies About “Improving Morale” Fail The “Straight Face” Test! — Grifters Rejoice At Demise Of Professional Civil Service That Once Allowed America To Become A World Leader!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-takes-aim-at-federal-bureaucracy-with-new-executive-orders-altering-civil-service-protections/2018/05/25/3ed8bf84-6055-11e8-9ee3-49d6d4814c4c_story.html?utm_term=.0416d74b09ff

Lisa Rein reports for the Washington Post:

By Lisa ReinMay 25 at 4:40 PMEmail the author

President Trump issued three executive orders Friday aimed at overhauling the federal bureaucracy by making it easier to fire poor performers, sharply curtailing the amount of time federal employees can be paid for union work and directing agencies to negotiate tougher union contracts.

The orders could result in the biggest changes in a generation to civil service protections long enjoyed by federal workers.

White House officials said the goal of the executive orders is to make the workforce of two million federal employees more efficient and responsive to the public and to improve morale.

In a briefing with reporters, Andrew Bremberg, the White House’s director of the domestic policy, said that a survey of federal employees has found that many do not believe their agencies adequately address poor performers.

“These executive orders make it easier for agencies to remove poor performing employees and ensure that taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used,” he said.

One of the executive orders, which allows employees accused of misconduct to be fired more easily, expands on legislation that Congress passed last year to bring more accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“President Trump is attempting to silence the voice of veterans, law enforcement officers, and other frontline federal workers through a series of executive orders intended to strip federal employees of their decades-old right to representation at the worksite,” the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said in a statement.

Joe Davidson contributed to this report.

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An honest, apolitical, expert career Civil Service has been the main difference between America and many of the dictatorships, one-party states, and failed states from which we once distinguished ourselves. Once destroyed, it won’t easily be rebuilt. That could well spell the end of America as an economic superpower and world leader.

Can the “Trump Kakistocracy” and his co-opted “Party of GOP Grifters” be stopped before it’s too late? Only time will tell. But, the clock is ticking!

PWS

05-26-18

GOP’S WAR ON OUR GOVERNMENT CONTINUES — FEDS’ COMPENSATION, RETIREMENT PROGRAMS TARGETED! — GOP WOULD SOCK IT TO MIDDLE CLASS TO GIVE UNNEEDED TAX CUTS TO RICH CRONIES!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/07/18/gop-again-hits-federal-retirement-in-latest-budget-plan/?utm_term=.4446f1d6d7d6&wpisrc=nl_buzz&wpmm=1

Joe Davidson & Eric Yoder report in the Washington Post:

“The House budget proposal released Tuesday continues Republican efforts to cut federal employees’ compensation by making them pay more for retirement benefits.

Saying they seek “reforms to civil service pensions to put them on a better fiscal path,” the spending plan released by the House Budget Committee calls on staffers “to make greater contributions to their own defined benefit retirement plans.”

While the Republican’s “Plan for Fiscal Responsibility” did not provide details, it echoes previous proposals, including one offered by President Trump this year. He proposed increasing individual out-of-pocket payments toward retirement by 1 percentage point each year until they equal the government’s contribution for those in the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS).

Over a six-year period, this would result in increased payments of about 6 percent. With no increase in benefits, that would equal a 6 percent drop in pay.

The budget “blueprint” assumes that the main panel overseeing federal employment in the House will take those steps to find the $32 billion in savings over 10 years that the blueprint would require.

The budget plan released by Committee Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) also would end the “special retirement supplement,” which pays FERS employees “the equivalent of their Social Security benefit at an earlier age.”

“These plans put the ownership, flexibility, and portfolio risk on the employee as opposed to the employer,” the GOP document says. “Similarly, federal employees would have more control over their own retirement security under this option.”

Federal employee leaders sharply disagree.

“Slashing the pay and benefits of America’s civil servants while lining the pockets of the wealthiest of the wealthy is a shameful way to govern the country and is emblematic of everything that’s wrong with this horrible budget,” said J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees.”

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Read the complete article with charts at the above link.

These guys are shameless. The USG’s career civil service was once a “model program” that states, private employers, and even other countries sought to emulate. It produced an overall talented, motivated, honest, and effective workforce. And, the promise of an adequate, stable, and predictable retirement program underwritten by Uncle Sam was an important part of that success.

The GOP proposes to end all of that and turn the USG into just another lousy employer more interested in his or her own welfare than the well-being of the employees who are the heart and soul of the business. Shifting risk from the “big guys” like the Government, who can actually leverage investment and insurance markets and raise revenues when necessary, to individual employees who are much less well positioned to bear that risk is immoral, not to mention stupid. You get what you pay for. Reducing government employment to the lowest common denominator will essentially make us a third world country.

I dealt with this in Immigration Court all the time. The main difference between the U.S. and countries folks were fleeing (many of which had plenty of natural and human resources) was the lack of government structure and the inability or unwillingness of government to be an “honest broker” serving the needs of the people at large. In too many countries, corrupt governments are seen as primarily furthering the power and interests of those at the “top of the pile” and keeping everyone else in line.

We once had a President who sought to create a U.S. Government of “the best and the brightest.” Sadly, those days are long gone. Ultimately, all of us, and particularly those who come after us, will pay the price for the GOP’s endemic lack of vision and decency and their failure to honor and appreciate the massive contributions of career civil servants to to overall success of our nation.

PWS

07-18-17

Trump Dumps On Feds — Budget Full Of Lumps Of Coal For Career Civil Servants Who Keep USG Running N/W/S Trumpsters’ Stunning Incompetence!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/05/18/trumps-budget-calls-for-hits-on-federal-employee-retirement-programs/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-fedgov%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.490caac3fe4f

Joe Davidson writes in the Washington Post:

“The budget proposal President Trump plans to unveil Tuesday would give to federal employees with one hand, while taking away with five others.

It calls for a 1.9 percent pay raise in January for civilian workers and a 2.1 percent hike for the military.

But in real terms, the civilian increase would be less than it looks if proposed hits on retirement benefits are adopted. Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget would:

Increase Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) contributions from workers by 1 percentage point each year until they equal the government’s contribution. This would take five to six years and would result in increased out-of-pocket payments of about 6 percent over that period. Out-of-pocket payments by federal law enforcement officers would increase by the same amount, but would not equal the greater contributions from law enforcement agencies.
Base future retirement benefits on the average of the high five years of salary instead of the current high three
Eliminate cost of living adjustments (COLA) for current and future FERS employees
Cut the COLA for Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) employees by 0.5 percent from what the formula would allowed
Eliminate supplement payments for FERS employees who retire beginning in 2018. The supplement approximates the value of Social Security benefits for those who retire before age 62.
FERS, which covers employees first hired after 1986, and CSRS have different requirements. Those covered by CSRS, for example, do not receive Social Security benefits.

Senior Office of Management and Budget officials, who declined to be identified because the budget has not been released, said that the increase in retirement contributions would not apply under CSRS because the employer and employee shares under that system already are equal.

Similarly, they said that eliminating the FERS retirement inflation adjustment while only reducing it for those retired under CSRS takes into account that FERS retirees receive Social Security, which is fully inflation-adjusted, as part of their benefits.

The retirement changes supposedly would take effect with the fiscal year that begins in October. Since the federal budget rarely is finished by that deadline, any measure including them likely would set a different effective date.

Most of these proposals have been in the Republican playbook for years. With that party now in control of the White House and Congress, chances increase that some or all of them will become law, even as the probability is low that Trump’s entire budget will be enacted as proposed.

The thought of Trump’s assault on federal retirement programs becoming law enrages federal employee leaders.”

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

As pointed out by Davidson, this slap in the face to hard-working career Feds is based on a longstanding GOP “wishlist.”

PWS

05-20-17

Joe Davidson, “Federal Insider,” from p. 2 of today’s WashPost (print edition):

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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