After an extremely disappointing start, Attorney General Merrick Garland is finally bringing some much needed balance and immigration expertise to his broken, dysfunctional, hopelessly backlogged, and overall reeling Immigration Courts. He appears to be at least partially heeding the advice of experts and tapping into the deep pool of private sector, NGO, and clinical program talent to improve the balance, professionalism, fairness, and efficiency of the U.S. Immigration Courts.
After years of a toxic combination of neglect, mismanagement, outright “weaponization,” and poor to haphazard judicial selections biased against well-qualified immigration and Immigration Court experts from the private/NGO/academic sectors, the latest round of judicial hiring by Garland shows a more appropriate and diverse balance of private sector experts, government employees with relevant immigration experience, and those with other types of judicial experience.
Here’s the complete list of 24 new Immigration Judges from EOIR:
https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1444911/download
For me, personally, two names particular “jumped out.” First, “NDPA All-Star”🌟 Judge Rebecca J. Walters, until recently the Managing Attorney at nonprofit AYUDA’s Virginia Office, will be Assistant Chief Immigration Judge at the Arlington Immigration Court! (Full disclosure: I am on the AYUDA Advisory Board.) Her “specialty” at AYUDA was litigation on behalf of SIJS applicants before both immigration agencies and the Virginia State Courts.
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge
Arlington, VA
PHOTO: AYUDA
Rebecca and her colleagues appeared before me at the Arlington Immigration Court. Among many other things, she was legal intern at our court while a student at the Washington College of Law at American University. We’ve all come a long way since the days when Rebecca and her fellow interns and JLCs used to “run the stairs” with Judge John Milo Bryant and me when our court was at Ballston, VA!
The second notable appointment is Judge Louis Gordon, until recently of Los Angeles, now at the San Francisco Immigraton Court. He is the son of the late beloved Immigration Judge Nate Gordon. As I mentioned in an obit for his father in Courtside, Louis, then a highly regarded private attorney, argued before the BIA when we visited Los Angeles during my tenure as BIA Chair.
Congrats to Judge Walters, Judge Gordon, and the other recent selections.
Don’t get me wrong! It’s going to take more — much, much more — than a few better judicial appointments to right the rapidly sinking ship at Garland’s EOIR. But, at least it appears to be progress. And, every voice of expertise, fairness, due process, and humanity in a system seriously lacking in all the foregoing qualities helps save lives and generate some energy for systemic improvements, in both “culture” and actual judicial performance, that have long been missing at EOIR.
Yes, although the honchos at the top of EOIR’s “Management Pyramid” would have you believe otherwise, practical, positive change can often come from below in any organization, even one as totally and completely screwed up as EOIR!
Kheops-Pyramid
Wikipedia Commons License
🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
10-28-21