⚠️☹️ GARLAND REPORTEDLY WILL DISAPPOINT PROGRESSIVES AGAIN WITH SELECTION FOR EOIR DIRECTOR
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
September 17, 2021
According to sources inside and outside EOIR, Attorney General Merrick Garland will appoint former BIA Chair and retired EOIR Senior Executive David Neal to the key position of EOIR Director, in charge of the nation’s dysfunctional and hopelessly backlogged Immigration Courts. He certainly will be an improvement over the last permanent Director, Judge James McHenry, who was hand-selected by former Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions.
But, progressives can’t expect the bold reforms and laser focus on due process that experts recommended. That’s simply not David’s “style,” nor is it his history at EOIR.
Progressives had hoped that the selection would come from among the many exceptionally well-qualified potential candidates in the private sector who spearheaded the effort to oppose the Trump regime and keep due process alive at EOIR. Indeed, many had anticipated, apparently in vain, that Garland would tap one of the many well-qualified minority female “practical scholars” from the NDPA to lead the court reform effort. Since its founding in 1983, EOIR has never had a female Director, and has only had one minority Director, the late Juan Osuna during the Obama Administration.
Neal will become the sixth White Male to serve as Director. He also would continue the “DOJ tradition” of appointing “insider bureaucrats” to the job rather than dynamic experts from the private sector. The latter might actually take bold actions to turn EOIR into an independent judiciary that would fulfill the now-abandoned vision of “through teamwork and innovation becoming the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”
Alas, Garland appears to have just as little interest in restoring that noble vision as his predecessors over the past two decades. That’s likely to not only further alienate the progressive advocacy community, but also to spell doom and suffering for many migrants and their frustrated, often pro bono, lawyers who must seek justice on a daily basis Garland’s regressive and totally dysfunctional “courts.”
🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
09-17-21
Interesting proposition. Does anyone really want change? Even change from an inhumane, uninspired, constipated system?
Well, I’d like to see EOIR become a model progressive judiciary. There are lives that can be saved over the next four years and some positive examples that could be established. Not going happen, but doesn’t mean my idea isn’t correct.
Obviously, nobody in the Biden power structure shares this vision. Just like the Obama Administration failed to share the “EOIR Due Process/Best Practices Vision” that we developed during the Clinton Administration.
Failing to take advantage of this opportunity to institute progressive reforms at EOIR and to give a diverse group of progressive experts the “hands on” judicial experience that EOIR offers has both short and long term adverse consequences for liberal democracy in America.
I’ll be long gone. But, I predict that the adverse effects of Garland’s poor leadership and deficient and deficient handling of EOIR will haunt progressives for many generations to come. That’s something that should be of grave concern to the “youth brigade” of the NDPA!