Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle
Tal Kopan reports for the SF Chron:
Trump officials cut immigration court interpreters after miscalculating costs, report finds
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration grossly miscalculated budget projections before it cited funding problems to replace many immigration court interpreters in San Francisco and elsewhere with recorded videos, according to a new watchdog report.
The Justice Department began requiring immigration judges to use videos last year to explain the court system at immigrants’ initial appearances instead of in-person interpreters, a move first reported by The Chronicle. The department said the move was necessary to save money.
But an analysis by the department’s inspector general released Tuesday found that Justice Department officials were working off faulty numbers, part of an inaccurate portrayal of the agency’s larger budget situation.
The department “erroneously estimated its yearly interpreter costs by extrapolating a single, unusually high monthly interpreter expense, which was not supported by invoices or other contemporaneous evidence,” the watchdog wrote. “This erroneous estimate adversely affected (the agency’s) leadership’s communication of accurate budget needs to department and congressional decision makers.”
Full story: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Trump-officials-cut-immigration-court-15327674.php
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Immigration Reporter
Roll Call
Meanwhile, over at Roll Call, Tanvi Misra reports:
DOJ ‘reassigned’ career members of Board of Immigration Appeals
The nine BIA members, all appointed before Trump took office, had recently rejected buyout offers from DOJ
By Tanvi Misra
Posted June 9, 2020 at 4:55pm
Career members at the Board of Immigration Appeals appointed prior to the Trump administration have been “reassigned” to new roles after they rejected recent buyout offers by the Justice Department.
The step appears to be the latest administrative move that critics say dilutes the independence of an important appeals body by filling it with new hires more willing to carry out the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies.
The change was announced in an internal email viewed by CQ Roll Call.
“This is to inform you that effective June 8, 2020, you will be reassigned from your current position as Board Member (Senior Level) to the Appellate Immigration Judge position,” said an email that went out last week to nine career members.
The Board of Immigration Appeals, or BIA, is a 23-member body under the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency overseeing the immigration court system. Three-member BIA panels review immigration court decisions and issue precedent-setting rulings that shape national immigration law.
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[DOJ memo offered to buy out immigration board members]
The difference between “board member” and “appellate immigration judge” roles goes beyond title, extending to pay ranges and leave policy. Appellate immigration judges also hear cases at both the trial and appellate levels, creating potential conflicts of interests, critics say. Sources familiar with the agency’s personnel matters, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, confirmed that all nine career members selected prior to the Trump administration received the email.
CQ Roll Call first reached out to EOIR for confirmation of the reassignments. Agency spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said via email that “board member roles and responsibilities are established by regulation and have not changed.”
Asked for additional comment this week once CQ Roll Call viewed the email, Mattingly said: “Adjudicator authorities are established by law and have not changed.”
The reassignment comes after DOJ offered, in an April 17 memo, “voluntary separation incentive payments” to the nine career board members, “individuals whose positions will help us strategically restructure EOIR in order to accommodate skills, technology, and labor markets.”
That memo, authored by EOIR Director James McHenry, noted the window for requesting these incentives closed on May 15. None of the nine career members accepted the offer, according to the sources at EOIR.
Under the Trump administration, the BIA has expanded from 17 members to 23. In addition, a flurry of career members have departed the agency, prompting EOIR to launch successive hiring sprees to fill new openings and vacant positions.
The nine most recent hires to the board include several immigration judges who denied over 90 percent of the asylum requests before them. Some also have a history of formal complaints of bias. The new hires have come on not as “board members” but as “appellate immigration judges.”
Ashley Tabaddor, who heads the immigration judges’ union, the National Association of Immigration Judges, said the “appellate immigration judge position” appeared to be a conflation of the BIA and the immigration judge roles. Adding more appellate immigration judges — who might review trial- and appellate-level cases at the same time — dilutes labor protections and undermines the independence of the immigration court system as a whole, she said.
“Over and over again, they’re just trying to conflate everything into one: ‘They’re all the same and no one should get protection from the union,'” Tabaddor said in an interview. “It’s so transparent that everything that they’re doing is to dismantle any semblance of a traditional court model.”
EOIR has repeatedly denied that accusation.
“Many board members have viewed themselves as appellate immigration judges for years, and EOIR first proposed such a designation in 2000,” the Justice Department said in a May 27 statement. “Elevating trial-level judges to appellate-level courts is common in every judicial system in the United States.”
Government officials also have said the agency has been trying to streamline a lengthy, inefficient hiring process. Recent changes to EOIR hiring procedures “have made the selection process of board members more formalized and neutral,” the department said in its May statement.
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A link to a complete copy of the IG Report is embedded in Tal’s report above.
Eyore’s Continuing Clown Show 🤡 rolls on, grinding up ☠️ and spitting out 🤮ruined human lives and mocking due process every day! When, oh when, will Congress and/or the Article IIIs do their jobs and put this grotesque spectacle of injustice out of its misery and end the unnecessary and clearly unconstitutional human pain and suffering that it inflicts? Is there no human decency and integrity left anywhere in our failing institutions beyond the regime’s direct control?
After dealing with the Trump Kakistocracy, Eyore probably never figured he’d be followed and exposed by tenacious folks like Tal & Tanvi who actually know more about what’s really happening at America’s Star Chambers than he does! Why don’t our legislators and judges have the same awareness, courage, and integrity as journalists like Tal and Tanvi? Why have those whose primary job it is to protect the Constitution and the general welfare by holding an overtly corrupt and maliciously incompetent Executive accountable gone “belly up?”
As usual, Judge Tabaddor is “right on.” Any resemblance between EOIR and a “court system” is purely coincidental. But, this mess is all too real for its victims — asylum seekers and other migrants asking for justice. The real question: How do the legislators and life-tenured Article III Judges who ignore and enable these deadly abuses get away with it? How do they sleep at night knowing that Eyore will trample more rights and destroy more lives of vulnerable fellow humans tomorrow, on “their watch!”
Due Process Forever! Institutional Complicity Never!
PWS
06-10-20