Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
The Trump administration has also reportedly taken aim at Biden appointees serving on the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA)—the body charged with reviewing immigration judges’ decisions—by reducing the number of members from 28 to 15. As of January, the BIA’s backlog reached a decade-high record of more than 127,000 pending cases, an almost eightfold increase compared to 2015.
Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration judge and one-time BIA chairman, traced a parallel between the Trump administration’s “purge” and a George W. Bush-era move to “streamline” the BIA. Back then, Attorney General John Ashcroft slashed the members perceived as pro-immigrant. The Department of Justice later found itself at the center of a scandal over senior officials’ efforts to hire judges based on their political and ideological affiliations.
Similar politicization could be happening now. Prior to her unceremonious termination, Doyle had been flagged on a “DHS Bureaucrat Watchlist” by the American Accountability Foundation, a right-wing group backed by the Heritage Foundation. Last year, the organization announced an initiative called “Project Sovereignty 2025” to expose “high-ranking civil servants within DHS and DOJ who are likely to thwart an incoming conservative administration’s immigration agenda.”
The website describes Doyle, who previously served as head prosecutor with
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), as an “immigration activist lawyer” with a “known history as a critic of DHS” and a “lifelong commitment to open borders and mass migration.” (It cites Doyle’s involvement, while in private practice, in a lawsuitagainst the first Trump administration’s infamous ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries as evidence of her supposed ideological bias.)“Significant time and resources went into hiring all of us and the group had a diverse background including a number of former OPLA prosecutors,” Doyle, whose hiring process took 14 months between multiple rounds of interviews and an extensive background check, wrote in a LinkedIn post, “but what we all had in common is that we were hired—through a neutral system I will point out—during the Biden administration. This firing was political.”
Schmidt, the former BIA chairman, predicts all of this is just the start: “I think the worst is yet to come.”
Former Principal Legal Advisor, ICE, DHS
Official USG Photo
Read Isabela’s complete article here:
Staff Writer, Immigration & Social Issues
Mother Jones
PHOTO: Twitter
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Not only does the kakistocracy treat immigrants unfairly, cruelly, and with disrespect, they inflict the same mistreatment on some of their own employees — many dedicated civil servants with expertise and honorable service.🤮
As noted by Isabela, GOP Administrations have a history of politicized hiring at EOIR and questionable personnel maneuvers going back several decades!
By sharp contrast, AG Merrick Garland actually honored all 17 of the “pipeline” IJ appointments made by his GOP predecessor AG Bill Barr under flawed selection procedures that favored those with prosecutorial or government service, some glaringly lacking immigration expertise, while discouraging or passing over better-qualified applicants with actual experience and expertise representing asylum seekers and other immigrants in his weaponized, DHS enforcement-oriented “Immigration Courts.” I was one of the many observers who harshly criticized Garland’s ill-advised and timid accession to his GOP predecessor’s questionable selections. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/05/05/%f0%9f%a4%ae%f0%9f%91%8e%f0%9f%8f%bbshocking-betrayal-justice-garland-disses-progressive-experts-with-secret-appointments-of-17-unqualified-immigration-judges-n/
While Garland did eventually make some good appointments of well-qualified jurists, overall his record on judicial appointments at EOIR was “middling at best” — certainly not the strong, effective makeover with subject matter experts unswervingly committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices so desperately needed at EOIR! As a result, ridiculously inconsistent decision-making, mundane precedents, and entrenched anti-asylum, anti-immigrant attitudes at EOIR remained at endemic levels throughout the Biden Administration!🤯🤬
When it comes to EOIR and enlightened, consistent, due-process- focused immigration policies, Dems are often their own worst enemies — a disgraceful trend that infuriatingly continues even today!🤬
🇺🇸⚖️ Due Process Forever! Kakistocracy Never!
PWS
02-08-25