"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) at the Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a highly-qualified individual to join our team of expert professionals who serve as Appellate Immigration Judges.
This is an Excepted Service position, subject to a probationary period. The initial appointment is for a period not to exceed 24 months. Conversion to a permanent position is contingent upon appointment by the Attorney General.
This position is in the Board of Immigration Appeals, within the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The incumbent reports to a Deputy Chief Appellate Immigration Judge, who in turn reports to the Chief Appellate Immigration Judge.
Appellate Immigration Judges must apply immigration laws impartially, humanely, and equitably and ensure that all parties are treated with respect and dignity. They also must resolve cases expeditiously, in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations, and consistent with the Department’s priorities and policies.
Appellate Immigration Judges are commissioned to serve in formal, quasi-judicial proceedings to review the determinations of immigration judges in removal and related proceedings, and of certain officers of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in visa petition proceedings and other matters. All Appellate Immigration Judges review the record on appeal, including briefs, exhibits, and transcripts, and hear oral argument when appropriate. An Appellate Immigration Judge may concur or dissent based on their view of any given case. The majority of the Appellate Immigration Judges’ duties fall into the general categories of removal proceedings, discretionary relief, claims of persecution, stays of removal, visa petitions, administrative fines, and bond and detention.
The majority of an Appellate Immigration Judge’s duties will be dedicated to the appellate work, but an Appellate Immigration Judge must also be qualified, and may be called upon, to conduct trial level proceedings in the role of an immigration judge.
Appellate Immigration Judges make decisions that are final, subject to appeal to the Federal courts. In connection with these proceedings, Appellate Immigration Judges exercise certain discretionary powers as provided by law and are required to exercise independent judgment in reaching final decisions.
Employment is contingent upon the completion and satisfactory adjudication of a background investigation.
Selective Service Registration is required, as applicable.
Moving and Relocation Expense are not authorized.
You must have relevant experience (see “Qualifications” below.)
Qualifications must be met by the closing date of the announcement.
If selected, you must file a financial disclosure statement in accordance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
You must receive your Federal salary by Direct Deposit (to a financial institution of their choosing).
Qualifications
In order to qualify for the Appellate Immigration Judge position, applicants must meet all of the following minimum qualifications:
Education: Applicants must possess a LL.B., J.D., or LL.M. degree. (Provide the month and year in which you obtained your degree and the name of the College or University from which it was conferred/awarded.)
AND
Licensure: Applicants must be an active member of the bar, duly licensed and authorized to practice law as an attorney under the laws of any state, territory of the U.S., or the District of Columbia. (Provide the month and year in which you obtained your first license and the State from which it was issued.)
AND
Experience: Applicants must have seven (7) years of post-bar admission experience as a licensed attorney preparing for, participating in, and/or appealing formal hearings or trials involving litigation and/or administrative law at the Federal, State or local level. Qualifying litigation experience involves cases in which a complaint was filed with a court, or a charging document (e.g., indictment or information) was issued by a court, a grand jury, or appropriate military authority. Qualifying administrative law experience involves cases in which a formal procedure was initiated by a governmental administrative body.
NOTE: Qualifying experience is calculated from the date of your first admission to the bar.
In addition, successful applicants will have a strong combination of experience demonstrating that they will perform at the level of competence, impartiality, and professionalism expected of an Appellate Immigration Judge. For more information about relevant experience and knowledge, please see the “How You Will Be Evaluated” section.
Additional information
This is an Excepted Service position, subject to a probationary period. The initial appointment is for a period not to exceed 24 months. Conversion to a permanent position is contingent upon appointment by the Attorney General.
Additional positions may be filled from this announcement within 90 days of certificate issuance.
Alternative work schedule options are available.
There is no formal rating system for applying veterans’ preference to Appellate Immigration Judge appointments in the excepted service; however, the Department of Justice considers veterans’ preference eligibility as a positive factor in Appellate Immigration Judge hiring. Applicants eligible for veterans’ preference must claim their status when completing their application in the online application process and attach supporting documentation. (See “Required Documents” section.)
Conditions of Employment: Only U.S. Citizens or Nationals are eligible for employment with the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Dual citizens of the U.S. and another country will be considered on a case-by-case basis. All DOJ applicants, both U.S. Citizens and non-citizens, whose job location is with the United States, must meet the residency requirement. For a total of three (not necessarily consecutive years) of the five years immediately prior to applying for a position, the applicant must have: 1) resided in the United States; 2) worked for the United States overseas in a Federal or military capacity; or 3) been a dependent of a Federal or military employee serving oversees.
As the Federal agency whose mission is to ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans, the Department of Justice is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment. To build and retain a workforce that reflects the diverse experiences and perspectives of the American people, we welcome applicants from the many communities, identities, races, ethnicities, backgrounds, abilities, religions, and cultures of the United States who share our commitment to public service.
Additional Information: The COVID-19 vaccination requirement for Federal employees pursuant to Executive Order 14043 does not currently apply. Some jobs, however, may be subject to agency- or job-specific vaccination requirements, so please review the job announcement for details. To ensure compliance with an applicable preliminary nationwide injunction, which may be supplemented, modified or vacated, depending on the course of ongoing litigation, the Federal government will take no action to implement or enforce the COVID-19 vaccination requirement pursuant to Executive Order 14043 on Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees. Therefore, to the extent a Federal job announcement includes the requirement that applicants must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 pursuant to Executive Order 14043, that requirement does not currently apply.
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Benefits
How You Will Be Evaluated
You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.
You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.
Applicants meeting the minimum qualifications stated above will be further evaluated to determine those who are best qualified. This determination will be based, in part, on the following Quality Ranking Factors (QRFs), which need to be addressed as part of the application package.
Ability to demonstrate the appropriate temperament to serve as a judge. Appellate Immigration Judges need to possess traits such as compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias, and commitment to equal justice under the law. Additionally, individuals in this role are expected to exercise discretion, and articulate how that discretion is being exercised, in complex, sensitive, high-pressure and/or emotional situations. A strong candidate demonstrates excellent analytical, decision-making, and writing abilities.
Litigation or adjudication experience, preferably in a high volume judicial or administrative context. Appellate Immigration Judges often must balance a variety of skills that can include managing a high volume of cases, drafting decisions, and reviewing an administrative record at the appellate level. It is vital that a candidate is able to manage a high-volume docket under tight deadlines without compromising quality.
Experience conducting administrative hearings or adjudicating administrative cases. Appellate Immigration Judges are expected to decide difficult or complex issues, particularly those that impact people’s lives. Prior adjudication experience in other tribunals – Federal, state, local, military or other court systems – is ideal, however, adjudications experience may be drawn from non-courtroom settings. For candidates who have limited adjudications experience, significant litigation experience before EOIR or extensive litigation experience in settings comparable to an immigration court setting may be considered.
Experience handling complex legal issues. Immigration law often involves handling complex legal issues. This role requires being able to work through complicated fact patterns and issues, novel areas of the law, as well as learning, adapting to, and incorporating changes in the law.
Knowledge of immigration laws and procedures. In this role, depth and/or volume of immigration law experience is important. Candidates should have meaningful experience applying complex immigration law, which can include representing non-citizens or the Federal government in matters involving complex or diverse immigration laws, adjudicating immigration matters, legislative or administrative advocacy on immigration policy issues, academic or clinical experience, and other similar work that involves routine analysis and application of immigration law.
To apply for this position, you must provide a complete Application Package by 11:59 PM (ET) on 04/12/2024, the closing date of this announcement, which includes:
Your Resume documenting seven (7) years experience since being admitted to the bar.
A complete online Assessment Questionnaire.
Document(s)addressing the Quality Ranking Factors (QRFs) listed above.
A Writing Sample demonstrating your ability to author legal documents (10 pages, maximum; an excerpt of a longer document is acceptable).
Current or former Federal employees must provide copies of their most recent and their latest SF-50, Notification of Personnel Action.
Other Supporting Documents, if applicable:
Veterans’ Preference Documentation: Although the veterans’ preference point system does not apply to this position, we accept preference claims and adjudicate such claims per the documentation provided. Note: If claiming 5-point veterans’ preference, include a DD-214 or statement of service. If claiming 10-point veterans’ preference, include an SF-15 and documentation required by that form, VA or military letter dated 1991 or later, and DD-214.
Any other supporting documentation required for verification as described in the announcement.
Tips for your resume:
Ensure that your resume contains your full name, address, phone number, email address, and employment information.
Each position listed on your resume must include: From/To dates of employment (MM/YYYY-MM/YYYY or MM/YYYY to Present); agency/employer name; position title; Federal grade level(s) held, if applicable; hours, if less than full time; and duties performed.
In addition, any experience on less than a full time basis must specify the percentage and length of time spent in performance of such duties.
Tips for addressing QRFs:
Applicants should use narrative form to address each of the five (5) QRFs. They must be written in a separate document indicating the by-number of the specific QRF being addressed.
Successful applicants will address all of the QRFs. If you do not have the specific experience addressed in a QRF, we encourage you to write about a similar skill, ability, knowledge, or experience.
Applicants should be thorough in addressing each QRF. This includes:
Approximate number of cases or matters handled in a given period of time.
Applicant’s specific role (e.g., adjudicator, first chair, co-counsel, responsible for the written brief only, etc.).
Length of time involved in a given role (e.g., lead counsel in 20 immigration proceedings in 10 years).
Specific examples of the types of cases (asylum application, pleas, settlement, bench trial, jury trial, etc.).
The number of court and/or administrative appearances made in those cases.
The case dispositions (ruling on the merits, plea or similar resolution, settlement, trial, jury trial, etc.).
Failure to submit the documents listed above with your application package will result in your application package being removed from consideration.
If you are relying on your education to meet qualification requirements:
Failure to provide all of the required information as stated in this vacancy announcement may result in an ineligible rating or may affect the overall rating.
You must submit a complete application package by 11:59 PM (EST) on 04/12/2024, the closing date of the announcement.
To begin, click Apply Online to create a USAJOBS account or log in to your existing account. Follow the prompts to select your USAJOBS resume and/or other supporting documents and complete the occupational questionnaire.
Click the Submit My Answers button to submit your application package.
It is your responsibility to ensure your responses and appropriate documentation is submitted prior to the closing date.
To verify your application is complete, log into your USAJOBS account, select the Application Status link and then select the more information link for this position. The Details page will display the status of your application, the documentation received and processed, and any correspondence the agency has sent related to this application. Your uploaded documents may take several hours to clear the virus scan process.
To return to an incomplete application, log into your USAJOBS account and click Update Application in the vacancy announcement. You must re-select your resume and/or other documents from your USAJOBS account or your application will be incomplete.
If you are unable to apply online or need to fax a document you do not have in electronic form, view the following link for information regarding an Alternate Application.
We will evaluate the qualifications and eligibility of all applicants, and then assess those who meet the minimum qualifications. All candidates who meet all the minimum requirements will be referred to the hiring official for further consideration. We will notify you of the final outcome after all of these steps have been completed.
Fair & Transparent
The Federal hiring process is set up to be fair and transparent. Please read the following guidance.
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Learn more about
Executive Office for Immigration Review
If you are interested in a rewarding and challenging career, this is the position for you!
The Executive Office for Immigration Review seeks highly-qualified individuals to join our team of expert professionals in becoming a part of our challenging and rewarding Agency. The primary mission of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is to adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation’s immigration laws. Under delegated authority from the Attorney General, EOIR conducts immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews, and administrative hearings. EOIR consists of three adjudicatory components: The Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, which is responsible for managing the Immigration Courts where Immigration Judges adjudicate individual cases; the Board of Immigration Appeals, which primarily conducts appellate reviews of these Immigration Judge decisions; and the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, which adjudicates immigration-related employment cases.
Learn more about what it’s like to work at Executive Office for Immigration Review, what the agency does, and about the types of careers this agency offers.
Yes, EOIR is a mess! But, it’s not going to get any better without better judges, particularly at the BIA which sets precedents and should (even if it now doesn’t) maintain nationwide consistency among Immigration Judges and articulate and implement “best judicial practices.”
Quite disappointingly and outrageously, the Biden Administration and A.G. Garland have failed to “clean house” and bring long overdue due process and judicial reforms to EOIR. So, the NDPA will have to go about it “the old-fashioned way:” one judicial vacancy at a time!
What if we had a BIA that:
Believed due process and fundamental fairness are “job one;”
Insured correctness and quality over “generating numbers;”
Institutionalized protection, not rote rejection, of asylum seekers;
Built on past precedents for properly generous treatment of asylum seekers like INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, Matter of Mogharrabi, and Matter of Kasinga, rather than ignoring, or looking for artificial ways to limit them;
Issued precedents insuring early identification and consistent granting of many current and repetitive asylum applications;
Looked for ways to simplify, rather than overcomplicate and obfuscate, legal guidance;
Had “zero tolerance” for anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, racial, gender, and other biases among Immigration Judges (e.g., no more “asylum free zones”);
Refused to allow the Immigraton Court system to be misused and abused as a “deterrent” or “an adjunct of DHS Enforcement;”
Developed and enforced “best judicial practices;”
Prioritized facilitating pro bono representation as a key element of due process;
Aspired to make the “former vision of EOIR” — “through teamwork and innovation be the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” — a reality, rather than a cruel hoax!
Of course, one judge can’t do it all! But, there are plenty of great judges in the current EOIR system, at both levels, who need reenforcement and reaffirmation! Rebuilding the EOIR system so that it is a real, due-process-oriented, subject-matter-expert court that insures justice — rather than institutionalizing injustice — has to start somewhere! Fixing EOIR would also help save the entire faltering Federal Judicial system.
If the NDPA doesn’t do it, who will? Certainly not Biden, Harris, Garland or their minions— or at to least not without being pushed from within and dragged kicking and screaming from without.
Waiting for Godot (a/k/a Merrick Garland) to fix EOIR isn’t going to cut it! Naseer’s Motley Group in The Rose Bowl Merlaysamuel Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Waiting for Godot in Doon School.jpg Copy [[File:Waiting for Godot in Doon School.jpg|Waiting_for_Godot_in_Doon_School]] Copy December 8, 2011So, don’t “wait for Godot” to fix this broken system! Clue: He’s not coming! Get those applications in now!
Better judges for a better America! Sooner, rather than later!
The agency is still considering referred applicants from the previous announcement posted September 25, 2023, under announcement number, IJ-12116877-23-VG. If you applied under that announcement and were referred for consideration, you need not reapply under this announcement.
This is an Excepted Service position. Upon completion of the required trial period, the position will be permanent. Additional positions may be filled from this announcement within 90 days of certificate issuance.
This position is in the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), Office of the Chief Immigration Judge. EOIR seeks highly-qualified individuals to join our team of expert professionals who serve as immigration adjudicators in this important Agency.
EOIR plays a pivotal role in the administration of the Nation’s immigration system. EOIR’s mission is to adjudicate immigration cases fairly, equitably, and efficiently at the trial and appellate level, governed by due process and the rule of law. Under delegated authority from the Attorney General, EOIR conducts immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews, and other administrative hearings, applying the immigration laws while ensuring that adjudicators are impartial, that laws are applied humanely and equitably, that all parties are treated with respect and dignity, and that cases are resolved expeditiously and in accordance with the Administration’s priorities and all applicable laws and regulations.
EOIR consists of three adjudicatory components: the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, which is responsible for managing the numerous immigration courts located throughout the United States where immigration judges adjudicate individual cases; the Board of Immigration Appeals, which primarily conducts appellate reviews of the immigration judges’ decisions; and the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, which adjudicates immigration-related employment cases. EOIR’s Headquarters is located in Falls Church, Virginia, about 10 miles from downtown Washington, DC.
As the federal agency whose mission is to ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans, the Department of Justice is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment. To build and retain a workforce that reflects the diverse experiences and perspectives of the American people, we welcome applicants from the many communities, identities, races, ethnicities, backgrounds, abilities, religions, and cultures of the United States who share our commitment to public service.
Job Description
Immigration Judges preside in formal, quasi-judicial hearings. Proceedings before Immigration Judges include but are not limited to removal, and bond adjudications, and involve issues of removability as well as applications for relief such as asylum, withholding of removal, protection under the Convention Against Torture, cancellation of removal, and adjustment of status.
Immigration Judges make decisions that are final, subject to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals. In connection with these proceedings, Immigration Judges exercise certain discretionary powers as provided by law, and are required to exercise independent judgment in reaching final decisions. Immigration Judges may be required to conduct hearings in penal institutions and other remote locations
Qualifications
In order to qualify for the Immigration Judge position, applicants must meet all of the following minimum qualifications:
Education: Applicants must possess a LL.B., J.D., or LL.M. degree. (Provide the month and year in which you obtained your degree and the name of the College or University from which it was conferred/awarded.)
AND
Licensure: Applicants must be an active member of the bar, duly licensed and authorized to practice law as an attorney under the laws of any state, territory of the U.S., or the District of Columbia. (Provide the month and year in which you obtained your first license and the State from which it was issued.)
AND
Experience: Applicants must have seven (7) years of post-bar admission experience as a licensed attorney preparing for, participating in, and/or appealing court or administrative agency proceedings at the Federal, State or local level. Qualifying trial experience involves cases in which a complaint was filed with a court or administrative agency, or a charging document (e.g., indictment, notice of violation, or information) was issued by a court, administrative entity, a grand jury, or appropriate military authority. Relevant administrative experience includes cases in which a formal procedure was initiated by a governmental administrative body.
NOTE: Qualifying experience is calculated only after bar admission.
IN DESCRIBING YOUR EXPERIENCE, PLEASE BE CLEAR AND SPECIFIC. WE MAY NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING YOUR EXPERIENCE. If your resume does not support your assessment questionnaire answers, we will not allow credit for your response(s). Ensure that your resume contains your full name, address, phone number, email address, and employment information. Each position listed on your resume must include: From/To dates of employment (MM/YYYY-MM/YYYY or MM/YYYY to Present); agency/employer name; position title; Federal grade level(s) held, if applicable; hours, if less than full time; and duties performed. In addition, any experience on less than a full time basis must specify the percentage and length of time spent in performance of such duties.
Additional information
This is an Excepted Service position, subject to a probationary period. The initial appointment is for a period not to exceed 24 months. Conversion to a permanent position is contingent upon appointment by the Attorney General.
Additional positions may be filled from this announcement within 90 days of certificate issuance.
Alternative work schedule options are available. Immigration Judges’ tour of duty may include Saturdays and Sundays.
There is no formal rating system for applying veterans’ preference to Immigration Judge appointments in the excepted service; however, the Department of Justice considers veterans’ preference eligibility as a positive factor in Immigration Judge hiring. Applicants eligible for veterans’ preference must claim their status when completing their application in the online application process and attach supporting documentation. (See the “Required Documents” section.)
Many vacancies (see below vacancy link for locations): Location Negotiable After Selection
Travel
50% or less – You may be expected to travel for this position.
Relocation Expenses
Not authorized
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Department Policies
Equal Employment Opportunity: The U.S. Department of Justice is an Equal Opportunity/Reasonable Accommodation Employer. Except where otherwise provided by law, there will be no discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex – including gender identity, sexual orientation, or pregnancy status – or because of age (over 40), physical or mental disability, protected genetic information, parental status, marital status, political affiliation, or any other non-merit based factor. The Department of Justice welcomes and encourages applications from persons with physical and mental disabilities. The Department is firmly committed to satisfying its affirmative obligations under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, to ensure that persons with disabilities have every opportunity to be hired and advanced on the basis of merit within the Department of Justice. For more information, please review our full EEO Statement.
Reasonable Accommodations: This agency provides reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process, please notify the agency. Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.
Outreach and Recruitment for Qualified Applicants with Disabilities: The Department encourages qualified applicants with disabilities, including individuals with targeted/severe disabilities to apply in response to posted vacancy announcements. Qualified applicants with targeted/severe disabilities may be eligible for direct hire, non-competitive appointment under Schedule A (5 C.F.R. § 213.3102(u)) hiring authority. Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to contact one of the Department’s Disability Points of Contact (DPOC) to express an interest in being considered for a position. See list of DPOCs.
Suitability and Citizenship: It is the policy of the Department to achieve a drug-free workplace and persons selected for employment will be required to pass a drug test which screens for illegal drug use prior to final appointment. Employment is also contingent upon the completion and satisfactory adjudication of a background investigation. Congress generally prohibits agencies from employing non-citizens within the United States, except for a few narrow exceptions as set forth in the annual Appropriations Act (see, https://www.usajobs.gov/Help/working-in-government/non-citizens/Links to other government and non-government sites will typically appear with the “external link” icon to indicate that you are leaving the Department of Justice website when you click the link.). Pursuant to DOJ component policies, only U.S. citizens are eligible for employment with the Executive Office for Immigration Review, U.S. Trustee’s Offices, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Unless otherwise indicated in a particular job advertisement, qualifying non-U.S. citizens meeting immigration and appropriations law criteria may apply for employment with other DOJ organizations. However, please be advised that the appointment of non-U.S. citizens is extremely rare; such appointments would be possible only if necessary to accomplish the Department’s mission and would be subject to strict security requirements. Applicants who hold dual citizenship in the U.S. and another country will be considered on a case-by-case basis. All DOJ employees are subject to a residency requirement. Candidates must have lived in the United States for at least three of the past five years. The three-year period is cumulative, not necessarily consecutive. Federal or military employees, or dependents of federal or military employees serving overseas, are excepted from this requirement. This is a Department security requirement which is waived only for extreme circumstances and handled on a case-by-case basis.
Veterans: There is no formal rating system for applying veterans’ preference to attorney appointments in the excepted service; however, the Department of Justice considers veterans’ preference eligibility as a positive factor in attorney hiring. Applicants eligible for veterans’ preference must include that information in their cover letter or resume and attach supporting documentation (e.g., the DD 214, Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty and other supporting documentation) to their submissions. Although the “point” system is not used, per se, applicants eligible to claim 10-point preference must submit Standard Form (SF) 15, Application for 10-Point Veteran Preference, and submit the supporting documentation required for the specific type of preference claimed (visit the OPM website, www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/SF15.pdfLinks to other government and non-government sites will typically appear with the “external link” icon to indicate that you are leaving the Department of Justice website when you click the link. for a copy of SF 15, which lists the types of 10-point preferences and the required supporting document(s). Applicants should note that SF 15 requires supporting documentation associated with service- connected disabilities or receipt of nonservice-connected disability pensions to be dated 1991 or later except in the case of service members submitting official statements or retirement orders from a branch of the Armed Forces showing that their retirement was due to a permanent service-connected disability or that they were transferred to the permanent disability retired list (the statement or retirement orders must indicate that the disability is 10% or more).
USAO Residency Requirement: Assistant United States Attorneys must reside in the district to which appointed or within 25 miles thereof. See 28 U.S.C. 545 for district specific information.
* * *
This and other vacancy announcements can be found under Attorney Vacancies and Volunteer Legal Internships. The Department of Justice cannot control further dissemination and/or posting of information contained in this vacancy announcement. Such posting and/or dissemination is not an endorsement by the Department of the organization or group disseminating and/or posting the information.
Updated December 1, 2023
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Yes, I’ve been highly critical of EOIR, particularly the BIA. But, to change the system for the better, we need the “best and brightest judges” at the “retail level” — the U.S. Immigration Courts!
In the process of denying asylum to a family targeted by gangs in Mexico, the BIA says:
The Immigration Judge’s finding that the cartel was motived by a desire to control the respondents’ land rather than their family membership is a permissible view of the evidence and is not clearly erroneous.
This negative finding by the IJ was “permissible,” not “compelled.” That language admits that other fact-findings on the same evidence could also be “permissible.” Much depends on the individual Immigration Judge’s frame of reference and willingness to look for “reasons to protect” rather than defaulting to “reasons to reject.”
So, what if the IJ were able to see and understand asylum from the standpoint of the applicant, rather than defaulting to the EOIR “any reason to deny” approach? Fairer fact-findings below would require more careful review by the BIA. Rather than just being able to mindlessly affirm adverse findings below, the BIA would basically be legally bound to uphold more positive findings unless “clearly erroneous.”
Of course in their haste to deny some BIA panels are prone to violate the “clearly erroneous” standard to “get to no.” But, that increases the chances of Circuit reversal. See, e.g., Crespin Valladares v. Holder, 632 F.3d 117 (4th Cir. 2011) (my case from Arlington).
Additionally, DHS can’t and doesn’t appeal every asylum grant, particularly when they are “fact bound.” I actually had ICE Assistant Chief Counsel say on the record in waiving appeal that while they respectfully disagreed with my fact-findings, they recognized that they were not “clearly erroneous” for purposes of appeal. (Other times they actually agreed after I had stated my detailed findings and analysis, sometimes actually repeating during closing arguments the basic analysis I would have reached on the record we had just made.)
Better judging below can actually cut off and discourage backlog building “let’s spin the bottle” appeals by DHS encouraged by the BIA’s systemic failure to consistently uphold the rights of asylum seekers and their “unduly restrictive” interpretations of asylum law!
Buried amongst the morass of poor administration and bad appellate judging at EOIR, many “true expert” IJs are making great decisions and saving lives on a daily basis. One of the “best kept secrets” at EOIR — often intentionally obscured by both EOIR and the media (not to mention GOP White Nationalist nativists) — is that as of this summer over half of all those who passed “credible fear” — 55% — received asylum grants if they were actually able to get to merits hearings at today’s backlogged EOIR!See, e.g., https://humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Asylum-grant-rates-fact-sheet-August-2023.pdf.
That’s an impressive rate, given that the system is stacked against asylum applicants! It also highlights the total insanity of today’s discussions on the Hill of how to artificially heighten standards to bar asylum seekers and promote more arbitrary wrongful denials of life-saving protection. What’s needed is better judging and more realistic and humane policies, NOT more cruelty and misapplications of asylum law!
As I have pointed out along with others, asylum grant rates would be much higher with better judges at EOIR and better precedents from the BIA. Better guidance would mean more cases granted at the Asylum Office and Immigration Court levels and a more timely and efficient system that advances and promotes due process, rather than inhibiting it!
But, it can’t all be done “from the outside!” Better Immigration Judges — true asylum experts with “hands on” experience representing applicants before EOIR and the Asylum Office — are essential to rebuilding EOIR as a functional court system.
For example, one of the expert recommendations from the very recent Women’s Refugee Commission study of asylum reception, resettlement, and processing was that: “One pro se assistance goal is to incentivize immigration judges to take a closer look at pro se asylum cases.”
But, this laudable goal presupposes Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum law and able to “work their way through” some of the inherent barriers to justice in pro se Immigration Court cases rather than submitting to the “artificial production pressures and any reason to deny culture” that still exists at much of EOIR. Sadly, not all current IJs have this ability. Moreover, the BIA has provided defective leadership and guidance. EOIR judicial training on asylum does not measure up to much of that readily available in the private/NGO sector. See, e.g.,VIISTA Villanova.
Many practitioners who have contacted me here at “Courtside” lament that their lives and their client’s futures would be better if they only were appearing before Immigration Judges who actually understood asylum law from a protection standpoint. They are frustrated by having their fine presentations and great arguments “shrugged off” with “predetermined boiler plate denials” citing negative language from the BIA — often ignoring what actually happened or was proved at trials.
Instead of being destined to forever be frustrated by EOIR’s shortcomings, YOU now have a chance to “be that judge” — the one who understands asylum law, has seen the defects in EOIR decision-making, who doesn’t view denial as “preordained,” and will require both parties fairly to meet their burdens. (Ironically, there are many places where the asylum regulations still place the burden of proof on DHS, even if many IJs and BIA panels are unwilling to enforce them.)
So, get in those applications for EOIR judgeships! It’s a great way to show leadership by improving the system from the inside while saving lives in the process! Better judges for a better America — starting at the “retail level!”
Excited to announce that I will be part of the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) National Task Force on Hispanic Law Faculty and Deans! I am honored to be included in a group of Latine law professor giants, whom I have long admired. I look forward to continuing working on a personal passion of mine, which is diversifying the legal profession and legal academia. ¡Adelante!
The Hispanic National Bar Association Launches New Task Force on
Law Faculty and Deans
Washington, DC – The Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) announces the launch of the first-of-its-kind National Task Force on Hispanic Law Faculty and Deans, aimed at addressing the alarming lack of Hispanic/Latino representation among U.S. law school professors and administrators (including deans), as well as the shortage of professional development resources specifically for Hispanic/Latino professors, deans, and other administrators already in the legal academy.
According to the most recent ABA Profile of the Legal Profession, only 5.8% of lawyers in the U.S. are Hispanic/Latino, even though we constitute over 19% of the general population. The shortage of Hispanic/Latino lawyers across the nation mirrors the paucity of Hispanics in legal academia. Only 9 of the almost 200 deans of ABA-accredited law schools in the 50 states and the District of Columbia are Hispanic/Latino. Estimates have the percentage of full-time Hispanic/Latino law professors at only 5%.
Hispanic/Latino law professors and law school deans are leaders of the profession and play seminal roles in educating future generations of lawyers and law-related professionals. Legal educators are visible role models and mentors to young people aspiring to careers in law. In addition, Hispanic/Latino legal academics – like other legal academics – frequently are tapped for senior government appointments, judgeships, and other key roles in our democracy. The urgency of this initiative is heightened further by the U.S. Supreme Court’s looming affirmative action decision, which threatens to make the shortage of Hispanic/Latino law students, lawyers, and legal academics even worse.
HNBA President Mariana Bravo has appointed as Co-Chairs of the Task Force Raquel M. Matas and Anthony E. Varona. Raquel Matas is the former Associate Dean for Administration at the University of Miami School of Law and has served as HNBA’s National Law School Liaison. Anthony E. Varona is Dean and Professor at Seattle University School of Law, the first law school dean of Hispanic/Latino heritage of any law school in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Varona was the first Hispanic/Latino dean at University of Miami School of Law, where he was appointed dean emeritus after the conclusion of his deanship.
President Bravo said, “An increase in the number of Hispanic/Latino law professors and law school deans will translate into an increase in law school enrollment by Hispanic and Latino/a students inspired by educators who hail from their same communities, share their backgrounds and struggles, and in many cases, share a bilingual heritage. The work of this Task Force is long overdue, and I am delighted that former Associate Dean Matas and Dean Varona, with many decades of distinguished nationally recognized service in legal education between them, will lead us in this important work.”
The Task Force will oversee the development of annual summer nationwide online workshops for prospective and existing Hispanic/Latino law faculty and law school deanship aspirants, through programs such as the Michael Olivas Summer Writing Institute and the GO LILA summer workshops, collaboration with other established workshops, and by organizing new initiatives to increase Hispanic and Latino/a diversity in the legal academy. The Task Force will plan in-person “how to become a law professor” workshops at the annual HNBA conferences, assist with matching law faculty and law dean aspirants with suitable mentors, support the professional development of and networking opportunities for currently appointed Hispanic/Latino law faculty, promote better data tracking by national accreditation and membership associations, and otherwise promote more Hispanic and Latino/a representation in the legal professoriate and decanal ranks.
In addition to Matas and Varona, the HNBA Task Force on Law Faculty and Deans will include as members nationally renowned legal education leaders, known for their dedication to diversifying the legal profession and the academy, including:
Dolores S. Atencio, Esq., Visiting Scholar, U. of Denver Latinx Center|Sturm College of Law
Steven Bender, Prof. & Assoc. Dean for Planning & Strategic Initiatives, Seattle U. School of Law
Kevin R. Johnson, Dean and Mabie-Apallas Prof. of Public Interest Law & Professor of Chicana/o Studies, UC Davis School of Law
José Roberto (Beto) Juárez, Jr., Dean & Prof., Nova Southeastern U. Broad College of Law
Jenny Martinez, Lang Prof. of Law and Dean, Stanford Law School
Margaret Montoya, Prof. Emerita of Law (and Medicine), U. of New Mexico
Jennifer Rosato Perea, Dean & Prof. of Law, DePaul U. College of Law
Hon. Jenny Rivera, Associate Judge, New York Court of Appeals
Ediberto Román, Prof. of Law, Florida International U. College of Law
Krista Contino Saumby, Esq., Assoc. Director of Career Dev., Elon University School of Law
Paulina Vera, Professorial Lecturer in Law, George Washington U. Law School
This Task Force shall operate as a Presidential Special Committee.
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The Hispanic National Bar Association is an incorporated, not-for-profit, national membership association that represents the interests of over 78,000+ Hispanic attorneys, judges, law professors, legal assistants, law students, and legal professionals in the United States and its territories. Since 1972, the HNBA has acted as a force for positive change within the legal profession by creating opportunities for Hispanic lawyers and by helping generations of lawyers to succeed.
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Congrats to Paulina, Dean Kevin Johnson, and all the other outstanding scholar/leaders named to this group. Another place where more diversity is long overdue is the Federal Bench. In particular, despite the disparate impact of Immigration Court decisions on Hispanic-American communities, they are underrepresented on the bench at EOIR.
As the awesome talent represented by this Task Force shows, it isn’t for lack of exceptionally well-qualified judicial candidates available in the private sector. It’s a recruiting and cultural problem at DOJ, along with severe credibility problems stemming from perceptions of overall hostility at EOIR to asylum seekers, other migrants, and their lawyers, often directed at Hispanics and other individuals of color. The “culture” at EOIR really can only be changed by getting on the “inside” — that means getting on the bench or into the EOIR supervisory structure.
On a positive note, one of my fellow panelists on that occasion, Hon. Claudia Cubas, is now an Immigration Judge at the Hyattsville (MD) Immigration Court!
I look forward to Paulina and other NDPA superstars 🌟 like her joining Judge Cubas on the bench in the near future. Positive change requires working “at all levels” to pump due process, fundamental fairness, and decisional excellence into a broken justice system.
Under AG Garland, at least some semblance of a “merit-based” selection system, one that honors immigration representation and human rights experience, has taken hold at EOIR. Therefore, Immigration Judge positions are the ideal “entry level” for those seeking careers in the Federal Judiciary.
Also, the “hands on” experience with making difficult decisions at the critical “retail level” of American justice will be an asset in any career path. Every correct decision at EOIR is potentially life-changing and life-saving! There aren’t many other areas where you can say that! These decisions are far, far too important to individuals and to our nation’s future to be left to the “amateur night at the Bijou” aura that unfortunately (tragically) has permeated EOIR in recent years!
Very proud to say that Paulina is a “distinguished alum” of the “Legacy” Arlington Immigration Court Internship Program and a “charter member” of the NDPA! 😎⚖️🗽
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, Immigration Court is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. Also, some of the chocolate is poison.
For many applicants in Immigration Court, the most important factor in determining success is not the person’s story or the evidence or the quality of their lawyer. It is the judge who is randomly assigned to the case. According to TRAC Immigration, a non-profit that tracks asylum approval rates in Immigration Court, Immigration Judge (“IJ”) approval rates vary widely. For the period 2017 to 2022, asylum approval rates ranged from 0% (a judge in Houston) to 99% (a judge in San Francisco). Of the 635 IJs listed on the TRAC web page, 125 granted asylum in less than 10% of their cases. At the other extreme, nine IJs granted asylum more than 90% of the time.
Based solely on these numbers, there is a 20% chance (1 in 5) that your IJ denies at least 90% of the asylum cases that he adjudicates. That’s pretty frightening. But there is much more to the story, which we will explore below.
If Santa were an IJ, it wouldn’t matter whether you were naughty or nice – he would deport you Ho-Ho-Home.
First, the raw TRAC data does not distinguish between represented and unrepresented applicants, and having a lawyer generally makes a difference. Overall, represented applicants were denied asylum in 64% of cases. Unrepresented applicants were denied asylum more frequently–in 83% of cases. So if your IJ sees many cases where the applicant does not have an attorney, her overall denial rate is likely to be higher than if most of her cases have lawyers. To find this information, go to the TRAC website, click on the judge’s name, and scroll almost to the bottom of the IJ’s individual web page. You will see the percentage of cases before that IJ where the asylum applicant had an attorney. If you see that your judge presides over many unrepresented cases, it probably means that her overall denial rate is higher than would be expected if that IJ saw more cases where the applicant had a lawyer. What does this mean? Basically, if you are before such a judge, and you have an attorney, your odds of success are probably better than the judge’s overall denial rate would suggest. Conversely, if you do not have an attorney, your odds of receiving asylum are probably lower than the judge’s overall denial rate would suggest.
A second big factor that is relevant to each IJ’s denial rate is country of origin. People from certain countries are more likely to be denied, and so if your judge sees many people from those countries, his overall denial rate will be pushed up. You can see country-of-origin information if you click on your judge’s name and scroll to the very bottom of his web page. The countries that have had the highest denial rates over the past two decades are: El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Mexico. And so if your IJ has many cases from these countries, his overall denial rate will likely be higher. Meaning that if you are not from one of these countries, your odds of winning asylum are probably better than what your judge’s overall denial rate would suggest.
A third important factor in examining IJ approval rates is the distinction between detained and non-detained asylum applicants. Certain judges have “detained dockets,” meaning that they rule on cases where the applicants are detained. Such people have a much more difficult time winning asylum: Some are barred from asylum due to criminal history or the one-year asylum bar. Others just have a more difficult time preparing their cases because they cannot easily gather evidence while detained. For these reasons, judges who decide many detained cases will generally have a lower overall asylum approval rate. Unfortunately, the TRAC data does not distinguish between detained and non-detained cases, and it is not always easy to know whether an IJ’s record includes detained cases (EOIR has a website that gives some details about each court, including whether that court is located at a detention facility).
While the TRAC data is not perfect (and there is no data on the newest IJs), it is the best source of information we have on Immigration Judge grant rates. Do keep in mind that the numbers only tell part of the story, and it is important to consider the above factors, as well as any other information you can gather from immigration lawyers and asylum applicants about your IJ.
What if you’ve done your research and have concluded that your judge is one of those who denies almost every case she sees? There are a few options.
One: You can go forward with the case and hope for the best. Sometimes a strong case can overcome a judge’s tendency to deny, and after all, even the worst IJs grant cases now and again (except for the 0% guy in Houston).
Two: You can ask for prosecutorial discretion and try to get the case dismissed. Except for cases where the noncitizen has a criminal or security issue, DHS (the prosecutor) is often willing to dismiss. Assuming you can get the case dismissed, you can then re-file for asylum at the Asylum Office (yes, this is a ridiculous waste of resources, but people are now doing it all the time). If you pursue this option, make sure to read the Special Instructions for the form I-589, as you will most likely be required to file your form at the Asylum Vetting Center.
Third: You can move. If you move to a new state (or at least a new jurisdiction within the same state), you can ask the IJ to move your case. Typically, you file a Motion to Change Venue. If the judge agrees, your case will be moved to a different court where you will hopefully land on a better IJ. Judges (and DHS attorneys) do not always agree to allow you change venue, especially if you are close to the date of your Individual Hearing or if you have previously changed venue in the past. And so if you plan to move your case, the sooner you make the move, the better.
Most Immigration Judges will do their best to evaluate the evidence and reach a fair decision. But some IJs seem intent on denying no matter what, and these judges are best avoided, if at all possible. Thanks to TRAC, you can get an idea about whether your IJ is one of these “deniers,” and this will help you decide how best to proceed in your case.
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So, at roughly the “halfway point” of the Biden Administration, one of the “best minds in the business,” Jason Dzubow, is expending his awesome brain-power advising lawyers on “strategies” for avoiding unfair “any reason to deny” Immigration Judges who inhabit about one in five Immigration Courtrooms under Garland!In other words, what steps you have to take to get a “fair hearing” on asylum from an agency whose sole function is SUPPOSED to be providing said “fair hearings” to everyone! See something wrong here?
One of these “strategies:” Request the ICE prosecutor’s agreement to dismissal of the (probably already long-pending) case in Immigration Court and “refile” before the Asylum Office (which also is hugely backlogged). Jason admits “that this is a ridiculous waste of resources, but people are now doing it all the time.”
Wonder why we have huge asylum backlogs? Despite what Trump, Biden, and nativist GOP politicos would have you believe, it has less do with those vainly seeking legal justice at our borders and LOTS to do with inept decisions, dumb actions (some of them downright malicious), and inactions by Congress and Administrations of both parties in the 21st Century.
Garland’s job was to fix this broken, unfair, wasteful, and astoundingly inefficient system. That isn’t “rocket science.” But, it requires dynamic, progressive, due process committed new leadership at EOIR and a major “shakeup” among Immigration Judges, at both the trial and appellate levels, so that those who are “looking for any reason to deny” either are get different jobs or start treating asylum seekers fairly and humanely byfollowing Cardoza, Mogharrabi, Kasinga, and 8 CFR!
Garland hasn’t gotten the job done! And, the applicants and lawyers whose lives and livelihoods are tied up in his beyond dysfunctional system are the ones paying the price for his failure! Also taxpayers see their dollars and resources being poured down the drain at EOIR!
But, they aren’t Garland’s only victims! EOIR’s dysfunction and its failure to provide consistently correct, generous, positive guidance on how to efficiently grant asylum, particularly at the border, drives a whole other series of failures, illegalities, wastefulness, and mis-steps by the Administration.
Much of the nonsense and legally inappropriate gimmicks being rolled out by President Biden himself at the border this week is an insane attempt to avert the dysfunction at EOIR and USCIS by punishing not the inept politicos and bureaucrats responsible (nor political grandstanding GOP demagogues like Abbott & DeSantis), but the victims!
Improperly taking away the legal right to seek asylum at the border and creating more “jury-rigged” faux refugee programs by misusing parole are NOT the answer! Whatever their short-term impact is, in the long run they will fail just like all the other “deterrents” and “asylum work-arounds” unsuccessfully tried by Administrations of both parties over the past two decades.
Indeed, for those of us who have been around immigration law and policy for the last half-century, it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the “ad hoc, highly politicized, unsatisfactory” approach to refugee situations that was superseded by enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980. How little we learn from the past!
What HASN’T been tried is the obvious:Recognizing and vigorously defending the right to asylum and building a fair and efficient adjudication system run and staffed by human rights experts under the existing authority provided by the Refugee Act of 1980, as amended. Why not build a fair, functional, generous legal asylum system under that Act that would encourage applicants to use it and reward those qualified for doing so with timely legal status (including, of course, authorization to work)?
Existing law already provides for “expedited removal,” without full Immigration Court hearings, of those who fail to establish to a trained USCIS Asylum Officer that they have a “credible fear” of persecution! Draconian as that measure is, and it undoubtedly has resulted in mistakes and injustices to asylum seekers, both the Trump and Biden Administrations have gone even further by wrongfully depriving those fleeing persecution of even this limited statutory right to present their claim to an Asylum Officer! To matters worse, both politicos and so-called “mainstream” media have “normalized” this disgraceful and harmful scofflaw behavior by ignoring the pretextual, racist roots of the Title 42 charade!
In the meantime, given the near total lack of leadership, competence, and courage from above to “do the right thing” and bring the “rule of law” to life, I do have a strong suggestion for NDPA members courageously “fighting in the trenches.” Apply for upcoming Immigration Judge vacancies at EOIR in massive numbers, over and over, until the roadblocks are removed and justice prevails!
As the relative proportion of “expert practical scholars” on the Immigration Bench grows and the “deniers’ club cohort” shrinks, change will emerge “from below” at EOIR, lives will be saved by the thousands, and justice will finally be realized in a system that now tries to resist and twist it! Functionality and “good government” will eventually win out over today’s inexcusable, and preventable, mess!
What kind of “judges” would “defy” the evidence of record to wrongfully deny asylum? https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
Read the 3rd Circuit’s (unfortunately) unpublished decision here:
The IJ credited Bimpong’s testimony, and the BIA did not disturb this finding. Yet the BIA concluded that Bimpong’s persecution was a personal land dispute that lacked any nexus to his membership in the Ashanti tribe. In doing so, the BIA deferred to the IJ’s conclusion that “the record is devoid of any evidence indicating that the [Enzema] Tribe targeted the applicant because of membership in the Ashanti Tribe.” AR 97 (emphasis added). That conclusion defies the record, which is replete with evidence that Bimpong’s tribal affiliation was a central reason for his persecution. See, e.g., AR 157, 162-63, 167–68, 185, 596, 598. For example, Bimpong testified that members of
the Enzema “did not want the land that [he] possessed to be owned by non-members of 4
the Enzema tribe,” AR 596, and that he “was a target of persecution because of [an] intertribal dispute between the Enzema tribe and Ashanti tribe.” AR 598.
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Typical BIA BS prejudged, form denial “boilerplate.” “Devoid of evidence” — gimmie a break! We tried (obviously unsuccessfully) to eliminate this type of non-analytical nonsense several decades ago. It’s indicative of a totally broken system that is unfair and biased against migrants! Why is Garland allowing this continuing systemic injustice?
Demand that Garland replace his inept, unprofessional, unconstitutional, “Trump holdover” BIA with real judges who are experts in immigration, asylum, human rights, and fully committed to due process and fundamental fairness!
To quote my good friend and Round Table 🛡 colleague, Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:
At the IJ level, the ACIJs have to be charged with determining if the IJ actually doesn’t know the law, or if they are choosing not to follow it. Of course, you need ACIJs who actually know immigration law, which isn’t always the case anymore. If it’s the former, you schedule additional training; if it’s the latter, they may need to suspend or remove the IJ. That should be a priority for the next Chief IJ.
But why isn’t this being caught at the BIA level? They continue to act as a rubber stamp. There have been a few cases just in the past couple of weeks where the errors were really major and apparent.
A BIA that would “rubber stamp” denials without question or meaningful analysis so that OIL could then argue “deference” to railroad refugees and other individuals entitled to relief out of the country is precisely what Barr and Sessions intended to create. In other words, a “parody of justice” that would carry out the White Nationalist restrictionist agenda without giving it any thought. And, it’s no coincidence that this unconstitutional agenda falls hardest on the backs of asylum seekers and other migrants of color. It also serves to reinforce the vile concept that individuals of color in the U.S. are not equal under the law.
The real question here is why Garland hasn’t effectively changed the system by bringing in real judges who are experts in immigration and human rights and who would be fair to all coming before his Immigration Courts regardless of race or status? “Gradual change” is unacceptable when individuals (and their conscientious representatives) are being subjected to deadly quasi-judicial incompetence on a daily basis. Tell Garland you’ve had enough!
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept
Few Americans favor mass deportations, and with good reason — a large majority of the estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States have been here for at least a decade, including more than 4 in 5 Mexican migrants. Many are fixtures in their community, with U.S. citizen spouses and children; the vast majority are employed, and some own their homes and businesses.
So it was not a radical idea when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued new enforcement guidelines last fall that urged deportation agents to focus their efforts on actual threats to public and national safety, as well as border security. As for long-term migrants, the bulk of whom are law-abiding, Mr. Mayorkas urged Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to use some common sense. “The fact that an individual is a removable noncitizen should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them,” he said.
. . . .
Despite the resistance, however, they appear to be having a preliminary and positive effect of tailoring enforcement to unauthorized immigrants who are dangerous. In the first 13 months of the Biden administration, 44 percent of deported migrants had been convicted of felonies or aggravated felonies, compared with just 18 percent during the Trump administration, according to internal ICE figures. For the same period, there was also a sharp jump, compared with under the Trump administration, in the number of arrests of migrants who had earlier convictions for aggravated felonies.
At the same time, the number of migrants held in ICE detention facilities has dropped sharply. At the end of February, roughly 18,000 migrants were detained, and the vast majority had no criminal record or had committed only minor offenses, such as traffic violations, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. By contrast, nearly three times as many migrants were held for much of 2019, when the Trump anti-immigrant blitz was in full force.
. . . .
It’s not lax enforcement to refrain from arresting very old or very young migrants, or to think twice about a deportation that would tear apart a family. It’s an intelligent application of the law.
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Read the full editorial at the link.
The Post is right. But, unfortunately, by not making this “smarter PD” part of an overall plan to reduce backlogs, reform the Immigration Courts, re-establish the legal asylum and refugee systems, and end unnecessary detention, the Biden Administration has failed to take full advantage of this promising development.
By “running” from immigration improvements rather than embracing them, they also fail to to get credit for replacing the “maliciously incompetent,” demonstrably not in the national interest Trump/Miller/Homan White Nationalist nativist policies with a functioning system that actually serves the national interest and works as well as can be expected without legislative reforms.
A major problem remains the underperformance of DOJ and EOIR under AG Garland. Without the enlightened leadership and better personnel that should now be in place, Garland has failed to “leverage and build upon” improvements in DHS enforcement priorities to slash backlog and advance due process at EOIR.
Indeed, disturbingly, Garland has actually built new Immigration Court backlogat a record pace, while inexplicably relying on a “holdover Miller Lite” BIA that continues to deliver bad precedents, resulting in increased wasteful litigation and backlog-building remands from Circuit Courts. He has also ignored the many opportunities for harnessing the innovative ideas and high-level pro bono advocacy skills developed by the private sector in response to the “Trump onslaught” to dramatically advance and increase quality representation before the Immigration Courts.
The grotesque mismanagement of EOIR by the Trump DOJ resulted in a backlog of approximately 12,000 pending BIA appeals at the end of FY 2017 exploding to more than 84,000 by the end of FY 2020 — a mind-boggling 700% increase!https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1248501/download
Yet, curiously, there has been no major personnel shakeup at EOIR under Garland. The Trump-era “hand selected” BIA whose skewed anti-asylum, anti-immigrant “jurisprudence” helped create this mess remains largely intact.
Most of the EOIR senior managers who helped DOJ engineer this unmitigated disaster remain in their jobs. Garland has sent a message that there will be no accountability for “going along to get along” with the White Nationalist war on immigrants and that he isn’t interested in expertise, fundamental fairness, creativity, or dynamic leadership by example in his reeling “court system!”
Yet, Garland continues to “blow off” and “lock out” the private/NGO sector experts who could bring rational professional docket management, higher representation rates, and resulting reductions in detention to his dysfunctional system. Instead, he continues the “Amateur Night at the Bijou” approach of unilateral “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and endless “built to fail gimmicks” designed by bureaucrats to meet political agendas without meaningful input from and consideration of the views of those who have actual private sector experience litigating in his broken system.
How does the make sense? It doesn’t!
Of course, effective, dynamic, courageous management of EOIR to focus on constitutionally required due process would provoke reactions from the GOP nativist right, including obstructive litigation. That’s why Garland also needs better litigators at DOJ: Tough, experienced “due process warriors” who will aggressively and expertly defend and advance the Executive’s authority to rationally administer the law, allocate resources wisely and prudently, and to recognize and vindicate civil and constitutional rights that have been suppressed by GOP politicos and some of their reactionary Federal Judges.
Bottom line: Probably the majority of those 1.6 million individuals rotting in EOIR’s largely self-created backlog fit the Post’s “lead-in” description above: “Many are fixtures in their community, with U.S. citizen spouses and children; the vast majority are employed, and some own their homes and businesses.”
Many could be granted asylum or other protection under proper interpretations of the law or granted “cancellation of removal” but for the unrealistic, anachronistic 4,000 annual “numerical cap” imposed by Congress decades ago. Others could be granted Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) just as it recently was extended to Ukrainians in the U.S.
Very few are “criminals” or others who should be “priorities” for removal. Most are actively contributing to our society and many are paying taxes. In most cases, removing individuals in the EOIR backlog from the U.S., even if possible, would be a net loss for our society.
Yet, the uncontrolled, undifferentiated EOIR backlog prevents the Immigration Courts from working in “real time” on more recent cases that might actually be proper priorities.What’s the good of a more rational and professional system at DHS Enforcement if the Immigration Courts under Garland remain discombobulated? The system will not change without dynamic expert leadership at the top and an infusion of better judges, particularly at the appellate level where precedents are set and “best practices” and some measure of fair and consistent adjudication can be established and enforced.
Immigration is a complex, often convoluted system. Without a comprehensive plan led by outside experts that fixes the Immigration Courts and restores a robust functional asylum system at our borders, the positive enforcement changes initiated by Mayorkas will continue to have limited impact. And, ironically, that will play right into the hands of the Millers and Homans of the world who would like to see democracy fail, irrationality prevail, and cruelty rule!
But these are, mostly, obscure policy changes or unrealized proposals. When Miller et al. condemn Biden’s “immigration record,” they zero in on his decisions at the Southern border.
Which is, frankly, odd. You’d never know it from the right-wing hysteria about Biden’s supposedly “open borders,” or Biden’s own campaign promise to “end Trump’s detrimental asylum policies.” But Biden has continued Trump’s most restrictionist, inhumane and possibly illegal border policies.
In some cases Biden has even expanded them.
As evidence of Biden’s supposedly lax border policies, Republicans sometimes cite his attempt, on Day One of his presidency, to end the program informally known as “Remain in Mexico.” This Trump-created program forced asylum seekers to wait in dangerous camps in Mexico while their U.S. cases were processed; there, vulnerable immigrants have been frequent targets for rape, kidnappings, torture and murder.
If Biden had terminated the program, that would have been a good thing, from a human rights perspective (not a Republican priority, apparently). But Biden did not succeed. After a legal challenge, a federal judge ordered the program to be resurrected — and the Biden administration not only obeyed but also expanded the program’s scope to cover even more categories of immigrants.
[Catherine Rampell: Joe Biden is president. Why is he maintaining Trump’s immigration agenda?]
Worse, Biden has maintained Trump’s Title 42 order. This likely illegal order involves automatically expelling hundreds of thousands of people encountered at the border without ever allowing them to apply for asylum, in contravention of rights guaranteed under both U.S. and international law. Both Trump and Biden have cited a little-used public health provision as pretext for this policy, even though legions of public health experts have argued that it doesn’t protect public health.
Perversely, continuing this Trump policy has also given ammunition to the hard-right nativists, because it has the unintended consequence of inflating the count of U.S. border crossings. Many of those expelled immediately turn around and attempt another crossing; in fiscal 2021, 27 percent of individuals were apprehended multiple times by Border Patrol, nearly quadruple the share in 2019.
The disconnect between GOP claims about “open borders” and Biden’s actually-quite-Trumpy border policies, is enormous. Two of Biden’s own political appointees who resigned last fall lambasted his actions as “inhumane” on their way out the door; six other high-level immigration officials have recently announced they were leaving the administration, without much public explanation.
It’s unclear why Biden has maintained his predecessor’s policies. One possibility is politics — that these choices were intended to stave off right-wing attacks about lax enforcement. If that was the motivation, though, it failed. Instead, Biden has delivered the worst of all worlds: inhumane, immoral, potentially illegal policy — and bad-faith political blowback about “open borders” all the same.
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Yup! It’s what “Courtside” has been saying all along!Read her complete article at the link!
Catherine sees much more clearly than any member of the Biden Administration the ridiculous failings of their so-called “immigration policies” (actually a series of disjointed, often self-contradictory, knee-jerk responses that sometimes undermine each other and reflect a total lack of thoughtful, morally courageous, informed leadership).
And, Catherine doesn’t even highlight the single biggest failure — one that cuts across every failure she mentions and also goes to the heart of our legal system!
That’s, of course, the abject failure of Biden AG Merrick Garland to bring due process reforms and better judges to his totally dysfunctional, grotesquely unfair, wholly-owned U.S. Immigration Courts. These “courts” — that function more like 21st Century Star Chambers than anyone’s concept of a “real court” — were “weaponized” by Garland’s Trumpy predecessors, Sessions and Barr.
They filled the courts at all levels with less than well qualified judges, many with no immigration experience or prosecutorial experience only, who were intended to help carry out the White Nationalist, anti-asylum, anti-immigrant policies developed by Gauleiter Stephen Miller. Garland has not replaced these unqualified judges with better talent, selected in a open, transparent, merit-based process with “outside input.” He has failed to make the substantive and procedural reforms necessary to bring order and some semblance of efficiency to his hopelessly backlogged “courts.”
He has declined to remove poor leaders appointed by his predecessors; nor has he tapped the large supply of progressive, expert human rights/immigration talent who could begin the process of restoring due process. He has continued to promote enforcement “gimmicks” — like “Dedicated Dockets” and the illegal use of Title 42 — that accelerate “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and have led to even higher backlogs.
His refusal to bring common sense, achievable reforms, and better judges to the Immigration Courts has demoralized lawyers and made pro bono representation even more difficult.
He has ignored the pressing need for better judicial training implemented by qualified outside experts. He hasn’t bothered to engage with those like the VIISTA Villanova program turning out exceptionally well-trained potential “accredited representatives” who could help reduce the staggering representation gap in his courts. Worse yet, he has allowed EOIR bureaucrats to create entirely new backlogs in the agency process for recognizing pro bono organizations and accrediting their representatives.
Garland’s horrible failure to energize and attract the progressive leadership and judicial talent who know how to begin solving these problems (rather than aggravating them) might eventually go down as one of the biggest “blown opportunities” for due process reforms in modern American legal history! This is the “low hanging fruit” that Garland and the Biden Administration has allowed to “rot on the tree.” What a (needless and deadly) tragedy!
Appoint these inspirational, dynamic, proven “scholar leaders” as Co-Chairs:
Dean Kevin Johnson, UC Davis Law & “most cited” immigration scholar;
Marielena Hincapie, National Immigration Law Center.
Add in three experienced Vice Chairs who really “know the business” (including where all the bodies are buried @ EOIR and how to make bureaucracy respond):
Judge Noel Brennan, NY Immigration Court, former BIA Appellate Judge;
Judge Dana Leigh Marks, San Francisco Immigration Court, former NAIJ President, “winning” attorney before the Supremes in the landmark asylum case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca;
Jason Dzubow, Esquire, “everyone’s favorite Asylumist;”
Lauren Wyatt, CLINIC, NYC, inspirational scholar-role model working “in the trenches;”
Ayodele Gansallo, HIAS Pennsylvania, Penn Law, co-author of Understanding Immigration Law and Practice, the “Bible of aspiring practical scholar-practitioners;”
Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean, Temple Law, co-author of Refugee Roulette and The End of Asylum.
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Now, THAT’S an amazing, inspiring, dynamic “all-star judicial lineup” that could actually achieve the former “EOIR Vision” of: “Through teamwork and innovation, become the world’s best administrative tribunal, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!”
What does this diverse group have in common?
Demonstrated, unswerving, overriding commitment to due process and fundamental fairness for migrants and all persons in America;
Impeccable, accessible scholarship in human rights, migrants’ rights, and constitutional interpretation;
Courage to speak truth to power;
Expertise in and concern for ethical issues;
Ability to engage in robust dialogue without sacrificing fundamental principles;
Ability to lead by example and inspire others;
Practicality;
Creativity;
Humanity;
Independence;
Widespread recognition, respect, and admiration among peers.
This court also would have the potential to deliver a long-overdue “wake up call” to the now-floundering Article III Judiciary.
Why would members of this high-powered group of intellectual giants be willing to leave comfortable current positions to accept the challenge of leading and reforming what currently is “America’s Worst Court System?”
A chance to be on a team of some of the most powerful “practical legal intellects” in America;
A chance to show how a diverse court of exceptionally-well-qualified judges can solve problems, implement best practices, and achieve timeliness and efficiency while enhancing due process;
The chance to save lives and improve futures — to make a positive difference in the world that will inspire future generations;
The chance to redefine “justice in America” in a positive way.
The BIA also has a large, talented staff of lawyers (I was one myself, back in the day) who would thrive and prosper under the intellectual leadership of these “practical scholars” and proven teachers! The BIA is potentially the “premier legal university/think tank” in America. But, unlike most think tanks, one with a mission, the ability to render best interpretations, implement best practices, and to issue hundreds of life-defining decisions every day! What other court in America could say the same? Why is this amazing untapped potential basically going to waste?
A pipe dream? Probably. But it shouldn’t be!
The BIA is “Not Quite Ready For Prime Time” (“NQRFPT”). But, “Neon Deion” Sanders IS “Prime Time.” Judge G. should take note! Deion Sanders Photo by Michael J. Cargill Creative Commons License
Just look how in a relatively short time as a head coach at a “non-power-conference” HBCU, Jackson State, dynamic former NFL star and “larger than life” personality “Neon Deion” Sanders has shaken up the system and changed the “playing field” in the insular world of “big time college football.”This week, the “projected top recruit” in America chose Sanders & J-State over the “powers that be.” Presence, leadership, boldness, talent, and results (Jackson State was 11-1 this year) can force change for the better in even the most inbred and change-resistant systems (like EOIR, and to a large extent, the entire Federal Judiciary)!
It’s totally within Judge Garland’s power, if he would only wake up and make the bold, yet totally logical, justified, and long overdue moves necessary. He’s already sinking deep into the morass of responsibility for probably the most dysfunctional, yet consequential, failed “court” system in American legal history. What’s he got to lose by taking the steps necessary to dramatically turn things around?
As I recently wrote about EOIR:
With so many extraordinarily talented, creative, courageous, independent legal minds out there in the private/NGO/academic sector of human rights/immigration/racial justice/due process this “intentional mediocrity (or worse)” is inexcusable. Yet, this massive failure of the U.S. justice system at the most basic level gets scant attention outside of Courtside, LexisNexis, ImmigrationProf Blog, Jeffrey S. Chase Blog, The Asylumist, and a few other specialized websites.
Recent GOP Administrations have been perfectly willing to unethically “weaponize” EOIR to carry out their far-right, nativist political agenda. They have “shrugged off” near-universal criticism of their most outrageous moves, including key quasi-judicial selections, and, inexcusably, “dumbed down” EOIR.
Democrats, by contrast, have been timid, indolent, and feckless, failing to undo the damage and make due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all persons a reality rather than a cruel false promise. Garland appears bullheadedly determined to move in the same wrong direction.
And, “time’s a wasting!” We’re nearly a year into an Administration that promised real improvements but has basically carried out a disgraceful “Miller Lite,” anti-humanitarian, anti-constitutional agenda of abusing, mistreating, and dehumanizing legal asylum seekers and other migrants. As pointed out recently by a number of us, this also extends to the dedicated attorneys and representatives trying to preserve at least some semblance of justice in our stunningly dysfunctional Immigration Courts.
As if to prove his tone-deafness, imperviousness to meaningful change at EOIR, and utter disdain for those advocates and “practical scholars” who helped him get his job, after one “better-balanced selection list,” Garland’s latest 22 Immigration Judge appointments reverted to the usual array of government and prosecutorial background appointments to the near-total exclusion of private/NGO/academic sector superstars who have the potential to materially change the trajectory of today’s dysfunctional Immigration Courts. Check this out! How many names do YOU recognize as among the “leading lights” of human rights and immigration scholarship and advocacy? How is this going to help advance due process, promote fundamental fairness, reduce the backlog, develop best practices, and reverse the endemic dysfunction at EOIR?
Compare and contrast this list with the ”Dream BIA” described above. The private sector talent pool to improve judging and justice at EOIR is really deep. But, Garland stubbornly refuses to “take the plunge” even as what’s left of our immigrant justice system disintegrates around him!
As Neon Deion could tell Judge G., “getting the best when you’re not yet the best” often involves working extra hard hard to actively change perceptions and aggressively recruit the “star talent.” Just sitting back to see who might apply or sign up doesn’t work any better at EOIR than it does in “non-power-five” college football.
This should be a perhaps never to be repeated chance to “model” a better Federal Judiciary. Almost overnight, Immigration Courts could go from being a “sad but true YouTube comedy routine” to an inspiring model for a better-functioning and more just Federal Judiciary.
But, not with the current personnel in place! Not with the opaque inbred selection process Garland currently uses (getting some outside Government expert input into judicial selections would be a “no-brainer” starting place). Garland is letting it slip through his fingers, but migrants and the rest of us are going to pay the price!
The “new generation” of our legal profession should be both outraged and existentially motivated to stand up to Garland’s intransigence!It’s not just migrants’ lives that are at stake here (as if that weren’t enough, in and of itself)! It’s the future of the U.S. Justice system, our legal profession, and liberal democracy that are swirling down the drain as Garland watches from his ivory tower refuge!
My time on the stage is winding down. But, for a new generation of legal professionals, it’s just starting. YOU and yours are going to have to live with the broken justice system and inferior judging that Garland is countenancing. Demand better, or prepare to live with the ugly consequences of a failed judiciary!
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 ImmigrationCourt 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:
For me, personally, two names particular “jumped out.” First, “NDPA All-Star”🌟 JudgeRebecca 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 ofSIJS applicants before both immigration agencies and the Virginia State Courts.
Hon. Rebecca J. Walters 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 JudgeLouis Gordon, until recently of Los Angeles, now at the San Francisco Immigraton Court. He is the son of the late beloved ImmigrationJudge 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!
Amazingly, the guys at the bottom of this structure sometimes know more about fixing problems than those sitting at the top! Kheops-Pyramid Wikipedia Commons License
Hon. Andrea Saenz Appellate Immigration Judge, BIA PHOTO: immigrantarc.org
Here’s Andrea’s bio:
Andrea Sáenz
Andrea Sáenz [was] Attorney-in-Charge of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) at Brooklyn Defender Services. NYIFUP is New York’s first-in-the-nation immigration public defender program representing detained immigrants facing removal. Prior to joining BDS in 2016, Andrea was a Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Immigration Justice Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, teaching, litigating, and working on the advocacy that grew NYIFUP at the city and state levels. Andrea has previously worked as an Immigration Staff Attorney at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a judicial law clerk at the Varick Street Immigration Court in Manhattan, an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project in Boston, and a high school ESL teacher. She teaches and trains widely on criminal immigration, detention, and litigation issues. Andrea graduated from Harvard Law School cum laude in 2008 and received her B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2002.
KEY QUOTE:
Andrea Sàenz, Attorney-in-Charge of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) at Brooklyn Defender Services
“Our platform calls for universal representation of immigrants facing deportation, because when the stakes are often literally life, death, or permanent family separation, no one should be deported simply because they couldn’t afford an attorney. We need to change, shrink, and defund the deportation system and reinvest in our communities. ICE enforcement, detention and other cruel immigration policies tear apart families, and we urge the Biden administration and the new Democratic majority congress to listen to our neighbors’ voices.”
Congratulations, Andrea! As one of my esteemed Round Table colleagues said: “Incredibly great news. I couldn’t think of anybody better and more deserving!” Nor can I!
This is great news for American Justice and for the NDPA. It’s even better news for the long suffering victims of perverted justice at EOIR and their courageous attorneys, like members of the NDPA, who have fought in the trenches for due process, human rights, and human dignity against an intentionally rigged and gamed system designed to deny all three of the foregoing. Andrea also has “EOIR creds,” having been a JLC at the Varick Street Immigration Court.
Finally, someone who has witnessed the waste, unfairness, illegality, and human carnage of failed policies enabled by EOIR’s feckless, tone deaf, careless, and complicit performance of their life-determining quasi-judicial duties. This breaks the scandalous two-decade plus exclusion of the “best and brightest” progressive expert judges from the BIA, the nation’s highest immigration and human rights tribunal, that has helped reduce due process and justice for women and people of color before EOIR to a “sick joke!”
I know that’s it’s impossible for any one person, no matter how brilliant, hard-working, and dedicated, to change the anti-asylum, anti-due process, anti-gender-fairness “culture” encouraged @ EOIR by the past Administration and, to date, not effectively repudiated by Garland. But, it is important that the voice of reason, practicality, due process, fundamental fairness, and humanity once again be heard at EOIR!
We all hope and trust that others will follow in your footsteps, Andrea, and eventually form the “new majority” of a much, much better Immigration Judiciary: That the properly generous, sensible, and humane view of asylum law established in Cardoza-Fonseca and Mogharrabi will again become the guiding lights of immigration jurisprudence rather than being parroted (but not followed), mocked, and dishonored by those whose job it is to protect individual Constitutional, legal, and human rights from Government overreach: That “through teamwork and innovation becoming the world’s best tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” once again becomes the vision of our Immigration Courts at all levels!
Speaking in behalf of the NFPA, we all appreciate the dedication, hard work, consistent excellence, and intellectual and moral courage it took for Andrea to put herself forward and be a pioneer for the better Immigration Judiciary of our future! On behalf of a grateful NDPA and an appreciative Round Table, thanks, congratulations again, and may the forces of due process guide you and be with you forever!
President Joe Biden announced another historic slate of judicial nominees on Wednesday who would bring badly needed diversity to the nation’s federal courts.
His picks also begin to address a major vacancy problem on California’s courts.
Biden announced a total of eight new judicial nominees; three would fill seats on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and five would fill seats on U.S. district courts. All are up for lifetime appointments.
With Wednesday’s nominees, Biden has now nominated a total of 43 people to federal judgeships. Thanks in part to the Democrat-led Senate, he has been confirming judges faster than any president in more than 50 years by this point in their terms.
His latest nominees also reflect his push to bring more diversity to the federal bench, both professionally and demographically. The courts have long been represented by white, male judges with backgrounds as corporate attorneys or prosecutors. President Barack Obama helped to diversify the courts, adding historic numbers of women and LGBTQ judges, for example. But former President Donald Trump reversed that trend by overwhelmingly nominating straight, white, male, right-wing ideologues.
As a candidate, Biden vowed to bring a diversity of perspectives onto the courts, even promising to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court if and when a seat opens up there. He’s kept his word; so far, his court picks have been public defenders, civil rights lawyers, voting rights lawyers and historic firsts with Native American and Muslim American picks.
Wednesday’s nominees include people with backgrounds at legal civil rights organizations, too. Thomas worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Urias and Vera both worked for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
California’s senators praised Biden for his six picks for courts located in their state.
“If confirmed, this slate of nominees will bring historic personal and professional diversity to California’s federal bench,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). “Our justice system needs the experience and unique perspectives these public servants bring.”
But California needs far more nominees than Biden put forward Wednesday. The state still has a whopping 15 vacancies on its federal courts, in part because the state’s two U.S. senators aren’t moving quickly enough to recommend people to the White House to fill those seats.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) acknowledged there is more work to be done here.
“There are 15 additional vacancies on California’s district courts that need to be filled immediately and more expected next year,” Feinstein said. “I look forward to continuing to work with President Biden and Senator Padilla to ensure that the remaining vacancies on the federal courts in California are filled with well-qualified judicial candidates who reflect the makeup of the state.”
. . . .
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Read the complete story at the link.
It’s an important step — but only a first step in the process of creating a diverse progressive Federal Judiciary, from top to bottom!
Meanwhile, a house built on a bad foundation is in trouble! In this case, that crumbling foundation is the nearly 600-judge U.S. Immigration Court at both the trial and appellate levels.
This “court” system, with nationwide jurisdiction and life or death authority over millions of lives and American families, is regressive, dysfunctional, and non-diverse, particularly when taking into account the composition of the American communities most directly affected by it’s too often defective, unprofessional, and biased decision making. That’s hardly surprising, because it was largely expanded, packed, weaponized, staffed, and directed in the “image” of Jeff Sessions, Billy Barr, and Gauleiter Stephen Miller!
Unlike Article III Judges, Immigration Judges currently are considered “DOJ Attorneys” who are selected outside the competitive Civil Service, have no “tenure” in their quasi-judicial positions, are subject to the control of the Attorney General, and can be reassigned, or in some cases terminated, at the will of the Attorney General. In simple terms, Garland could fix this badly broken system, but hasn’t done so.
The sorry condition of today’s Immigration Courts (“EOIR”) is particularly disgraceful when one considers the wide, diverse, progressive pool of potential judicial talent available in the private/NGO/sector who were either discouraged from applying under Trump or passed over in favor of lesser-qualified candidates perceived (whether accurately or not) to be more receptive and obedient to the overtly White Nationalist, xenophobic stance promoted by Trump’s DOJ.
To date, Garland has replaced zero (0) of the Trump judicial appointees. He has hired no notable progressive judges as inspirational leaders. He “promoted” one notable progressive to be among the several dozen “Assistant Chief Immigration Judges.” He outrageously appointed his first 27 Immigration Judges from among those “preselected” by Barr under defective procedures that have been universally condemned by progressive experts!
For the most part, without any progressive judicial leadership, precedents, or procedures, EOIR rambles on producing the same sloppy, haste-makes-waste, anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, racially and misogynistically tinged decisions that were the “hallmark” of the Trump-era EOIR.
If things don’t change quickly, I guarantee that American progressives will come to rue the squandered opportunity to radically reform EOIR and convert it into a model progressive judiciary that will showcase due-process-focused judging, innovation, and best judicial practices while saving lives and promoting racial justice, gender rights, and equal justice for all at the critical “retail level” of our justice system!
In the strangely disingenuous world of Judge Garland’s DOJ:
This is unacceptable treatment of convicted felons:
Death Penalty By Dave Granlund Reprinted by license
But, this is “A-OK” treatment of those seeking asylum @ EOIR:
“Justice” Star Chamber Style
Pausing the Trump/Barr Federal killing spree makes sense. In addition to Garland’s “due process concerns,” there is the larger problem that the death penalty is unconstitutional under the 8th Amendment.
One would think that AG Garland’s concern for due process would extend to individuals being railroaded through his broken, biased, dysfunctional, due-process-denying Immigration “Courts” (that aren’t courts at all) who often face removal to places where they face abuse, torture, and/or death. Heck, at the border they are illegally removed without any process at all, as Judge Garland and his lieutenants look the other way. They might pretend not to see what’s happening. But, we see it!
Apparently, in Garland’s system due process is only a requirement for convicted felons, not for vulnerable individuals fighting for their lives in a process intentionally skewed against them. His is a system staffed largely with “Miller-Lite judges” selected by his two immediate predecessors who prided themselves on creating a “due process free zone” at EOIR and “partnering” with DHS Enforcement!
Gen. Garland continues to use “Miller Lite Mercenaries” against migrants. “The U.S. constitution states that our judicial system is a ‘separate but equal part’ to our democracy. But immigration courts have nothing to do with that.” — Tea Ivanovic, Immigrant Food Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsDan Kowalski Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)
Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:
“[T]he BIA has not addressed the question of the applicability of the color-of-law rule regarding state involvement in torture. … The parties agree that a remand is the best alternative where the BIA has made an unauthorized or inadequately supported factual finding on the likelihood of torture, thereby leaving unresolved whether the IJ failed to apply the rule-of-law theory of state involvement in torture. Accordingly, we conclude that the prudent course is to remand the case to the BIA. … We further order the BIA to remand the case to the IJ for a clear factual finding on the likelihood of torture and for the IJ’s clarification, if necessary, on the question of state involvement in light of the color-of-law rule. … PETITION GRANTED; VACATED AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO REMAND.”
Congrats to Matthew Nickson! Getting justice for a migrant in the notoriously pro-Government 5th Cir. is no mean feat! Think of how much easier your job would be if AG Garland hired some “real judges” at EOIR — experts in immigration and human rights who have represented individuals in Immigration Court and who are committed to due process and fundamental fairness above all else!
When you’re out to stick it to Hondurans (actually all Northern Triangle migrants), regardless of facts or law, to please your sleazy White Nationalist political bosses in the Trump regime, bad things are going to happen.
Let’s not forget that the Trump regime entered into a totally corrupt and bogus “Safe Third Country” agreement with Honduras, probably one of the least safe countries in the Hemisphere with no functional asylum system at all. Given this level of overt political fraud by the “bosses,” I doubt that the regime would have appreciated BIA bureaucrats correctly finding that torture with government acquiescence is likely in Honduras.
Sure, these failures were before Garland took over. But, he has made little effort to date to either acknowledge and root out the deep corruption and anti-immigrant weaponization of the Immigration Courts or to address the inadequate “go along to get along judging” that was encouraged at EOIR. In plain terms, respondents did not get, and still do not get, qualified, fair, and impartial judges at EOIR to adjudicate their claims.
You have only to look at the comedy of errors and ineptitude at EOIR in this case “outed” by one of the most pro-Government Circuits in America to see the proof! That’s unconstitutional!
Remand after remand to “get it right” also “jacks backlog.” Just getting a case back on an Immigration Judge’s docket takes time and effort in a non-automated system with no e-filing and traditionally overwhelmed and demoralized staff. Instead of fixing “customer service” @ EOIR, the Trump kakistocracy invested in ludicrous, due-process-destroying “IJ Dashboards” to keep the quotas filled and the unconstitutional “nativist deportation railroad” moving. Yet, Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke pretend that none of these constitutional and civil rights absurdities, not to mention grotesque management fraud, waste, and abuse, happened!
Don’t stand for any of Garland’s dishonest “expedited dockets” which implicitly blame those seeking justice under law and their courageous lawyers for the ungodly mess he and his lieutenants inherited but have failed to address! And, “dedicated docket for asylum seekers” is just a euphemism for more backlog-building, due-process denying “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and continuing mismanagement by Garland.
I’ll bet that qualified experts could cut the largely self-inflicted backlog by at least 50% in 90 days without stomping on anyone’s due process rights merely by administratively closing or terminating without prejudice hundreds of thousands of non-priority aged cases. Many of those could better be handled at USCIS.
It shouldn’t be this difficult to get an Administration that ran and got elected on a “reform” and “return to good government” platform to do the right thing here. But, it is! EOIR needs reform, including a new BIA and competent, expert judges who know asylum law, respect due process, and will treat migrants and their attorneys fairly, respectfully, and humanely. It’s not a “big ask!” So why is it “above Garland’s pay grade?”
Deep ThroatIs DOJ/EOIR “Management” staking out every one of these in the DELMARVA area to catch “DT-21?” Is that why they don’t have time to reform EOIR? — Creative CommonsThe EOIR Tower in Falls Church might appear shiny from the outside, but inside it’s still just about as opaque as the lives of those caught up in Garland’s Star Chambers!
1) The Richmond video “court” is opening soon to hear more cases in secret without public access.
2) Several IJs working from home are now hearing cases by VTC from their residences. But, there’s no provision for those hearings to be open to the public contrary to the regulations. More VTC just means more problems.
3) EOIR has hired 10 or 11 new IJs but hasn’t disclosed the names publicly. Can “Dandy Dan” Kowalski & other news-hounds smoke out the names again?
4) At least one inexcusable, major setback on long overdue progressive judicial leadership @ EOIR! Unfortunately, the AG decided not to remove Wetmore as Chairman and his probation period has passed.
So, are we stuck with a Miller/Barr/Trump toady “plant” in charge of a “court” that probably has more to do with racial and gender justice in America than any “judicial” (using the term lightly) body short of the Supremes and that “gets it wrong” — often dead wrong — in well-publicized bad opinions “outed” by the Article IIIs on a regular basis?No, doesn’t make sense!
Progressives, the NDPA, and anybody who cares about due process and equal justice in America should be raising hell with the Administration until we get the change we voted for!
“Passing probation” doesn’t guarantee anyone a particular SES position or a quasi-judicial position at EOIR. Just ask legions of past DOJ “Hallwalkers!”
Garland was sitting around the Ivory Tower while the NDPA was fighting in the trenches for human lives and the survival of Americans democracy. That’s a big reason why Garland, Biden, Harris, and the rest of the Administration have their jobs now! Don’t stand for an immigration bureaucracy and justice system controlled and populated by disciples and plants of “Gauleiter Miller,” “Billy the Bigot,” and “Gonzo Apocalypto.”
5) On the much brighter side, Courtside has confirmed from several sources that the long-extinguished flames of due process, fundamental fairness, best practices, humanity, compassion, and intellectual courage should soon be re-ignited in the opaque darkness and “rabbit warrens” of the 24th Floor of the Tower where the BIA hangs out.
Will the “wallsof bias and intentional exclusion of the best and brightest American justice has to offer from outside government” that has plagued the BIA and demeaned American Justice for the past two decades finally be cracked? Will that crack become a breach that eventually becomes a flood of scholarship, fairness, efficiency, respect, and teamwork that will transform a “Tower of Darkness” in to a “Beacon of Justice” that can be seen from coast to coast?
6) Stay tuned! And, keep demanding better, much much better, from Garland, Monaco, Gupta, Clarke, and the rest of the Biden immigration, civil rights, human bureaucracy at DOJ! They seem to think that “elections only have consequences” in immigration and human rights when the GOP wins.
Evidently, they view themselves as above the fray just treating EOIR like another piece of their dysfunctional DOJ bureaucracy. Nothing very proactive or bold! Just let the abuses be unearthed by others and dribble out a bit at a time.Then do a little damage control and “message massaging.”
That’s a prime reason why, despite representing the majority of Americans, and having access to better ideas, the Dems have had trouble governing, retaining power, and turning their agenda into action over the past half-century!It’s also a prime reason why humanity is suffering in our dysfunctional Immigration “Courts,” in a broken DHS that continues to run Gulags and has shamefully retaliated against NDPA members fighting for justice, and in the inexcusable human carnage at our borders fueled by the DOJ’s participation in corruption, intellectual dishonesty, and the illegal suspension of the rule of law!150 days in and still no functioning asylum system? Come on man!
Five years ago, after retiring, I tried to tell the Clinton folks that not appointing a progressive immigration/human rights expert to be Attorney General would be a huge mistake. Obviously, that became a “moot point” in November 2016.
Ironically, however, the Trump Administration got my message in a negative way. They turned the DOJ over to radical White Nationalist nativists determined to use the negative power of bureaucracy and immigration to batter down the foundations of Americans democracy and spread the gospel of racism, misogyny, and unbridled xenophobia. And,it worked! Big time!
I’m certainly not the only one who vainly tried to tell the Biden Administration NOT to repeat the same mistakes at Justice. Better candidates for AG, folks like the Castro brothers, Chairman Zoe Lofgren, Rep. Jamie Ruskin, and Dean Kevin Johnson were out there. Real, courageous, dedicated progressive leaders and due process mavens! Folks who would have shaken up EOIR, gotten rid of the deadwood and incompetence, cut the unnecessary backlog, instituted best practices, and reestablished a robust, functioning asylum system at the border by now! Folks with the proven backbone to stand up for justice, against all threats, internal and external! Folks who would take seriously their oaths “to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic!”
The slow and ineffectual pace of personnel and other achievable internal reforms at EOIR continues to be an insult to those who are the future of American democracy — if American democracy indeed has a future! That’s still up in the air!
We can see the effect of delay in making the necessary bold progressive immigration and human rights reforms in VP Harris’s foundering performance at the border. No rule of law, no program for fairly and efficiently adjudicating asylum, no open ports of entry, no coherent message on the realities of human migration, no order, kids in bad placements, Border Patrol agents “apprehending” folks who only want their prompt, fair asylum screening from Asylum Officers! What an (avoidable) mess!
The nativist opposition hasn’t folded their tents! Stephen Miller & co. are energized by Garland’s failure to heed the advice of and bring in the expertise of progressives at EOIR. He’s like “Voldemort” — every day Garland dawdles, Miller gets stronger.
His power grows every day that Garland dawdles and progressives find themselves still playing defense, rather than running the show under tone deaf “management” that owes its very existence to them and their support! After 8 years of “lockout” by Obama — yielding a quite predictable human rights and legal disaster — are the folks who revived democracy and kept the fires burning in Immigraton Court REALLY willing to put up with another four years of THIS? Are Dems REALLY THIS DUMB (not to mention ungrateful)? By Blanca Toth, OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Creative Commons
Keep the outrage and opposition to intransigence and failure to bring reform to EOIR coming! NDPRers, my time on the stage is winding down! It’s YOUR future and YOUR CHILDREN’S future on the line today!
Opaque procedures, regressive leadership, secret hearings, Miller cronies, bad precedents, lack of progressive jurisprudence, Article III embarrassments and travesties, mindlessly “expedited” dockets, Aimless Docket Reshuffling, idiotic due-process denying production quotas and “performance work plans,” contempt for advocates and experts, defense of the indefensible, and treating human lives and advocates as “fungible” at EOIR are NOT OK!
Keep the resistance building! Be outraged! Turn up the decibels until even Garland and the West Wing can’t ignore the uproar!
On June 16, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally, mercifully vacated three decisions that formed a key part of the Trump administration’s unrelenting attack on the law of asylum.1 Matter of A-B-, issued by Jeff Sessions in June 2018, took aim in particular at victims of domestic violence.2 Matter of L-E-A-, issued the following year by William Barr, sought to undermine protection for those targeted by gangs due to their familial ties.3 And on January 14, 2021, six days from the end of the Trump Administration, acting A.G. Jeffrey Rosen issued a second decision in A-B-, gratuitously criticizing the method for determining nexus in asylum claims employed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, while conveniently evading that court’s review of the original decision in the case through remand.4
Garland’s action restores the law to where it stood prior to June 11, 2018, but only for the time being. Proposed rules on the subject (which Garland referenced) are due by October 30, when they will first be subjected to a period of public comment. If final rules are eventually published, it will occur well into next year.
As we sigh in collective relief and celebrate the first steps towards correcting our asylum laws, let’s also take note of the imperfect place in which the case law stands at present.
As to domestic violence claims, the BIA’s 2014 decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- (which Matter of A-B- had vacated) has been restored as binding precedent.5 That decision was issued at a time when (as now) regulations addressing particular social groups were being contemplated by DHS and EOIR.6 While A-R-C-G- was an extremely welcome development, the Board used it to recognize a rather narrowly-defined group: “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship.” In a footnote to the decision, the Board declined to address the argument of several amici (including UNHCR) that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone. Although A-R-C-G- led to many grants of asylum, some immigration judges relied on the limited scope of the group’s definition to deny claims involving slightly broader variations, in particular, where the victim was not legally married, but nevertheless in a domestic relationship that she was unable to leave. While the BIA reversed some of those denials in unpublished decisions, it declined to speak to the issue through binding precedent.
As to Matter of L-E-A-, Garland’s recent action returns us to the BIA’s original opinion in that case.7 While the decision acknowledged that families constitute particular social groups (a point that was not in dispute, having been universally recognized for some 35 years and stipulated to by DHS), the BIA still denied asylum by invoking a legally incorrect standard for establishing nexus that it has continued to apply in all family-based asylum claims.
For these reasons, the content of the forthcoming regulations will be extremely important in determining the future of asylum in this country. While a return to the test for social group cognizability expressed in the BIA’s 1985 precedent in Matter of Acosta tops most regulation wish lists, I will focus the discussion here on a couple of more specific items necessary to correct the shortcomings of Matter of A-R-C-G- and Matter of L-E-A-.
First, the regulations need to explicitly recognize that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone. In its 2002 Gender Guidelines, UNHCR identified women “as a clear example of a social subset defined by innate and immutable characteristics, and who are frequently treated differently than men,” and whose “characteristics also identify them as a group in society, subjecting them to different treatment and standards in some countries.”8 However, over the nineteen years since those guidelines were issued, the BIA has consistently avoided considering the issue.
The peril of defining gender-based groups in the more narrow manner employed by the BIA has been addressed by two distinguished commentators, who explain that such practice results in “constant re-litigating of such claims,” sometimes creating “an obstacle course in which the postulated group undergoes constant redefinition.”9 And of course, that is exactly what has happened here, as A-R-C-G- gave way to A-B-, which led to differing interpretations among different courts until Garland’s recent reset. The above-mentioned commentators further decried the “nitpicking around the margins of the definition” resulting from the narrow approach when the true reason for the risk of persecution to the applicant “is simply her membership in the social group of ‘women.’”10 Regulations recognizing gender alone as a particular social group would thus provide clarity to judges and asylum officers, eliminate the wastefulness of drawn out litigation involving “nitpicking around the margins,” and bring our laws into line with international standards.
But as L-E-A- demonstrates, recognition of a group alone does not guarantee asylum protection. In order for a group’s recognition to be meaningful, the regs must also address an ongoing problem with the BIA’s method for determining nexus, or whether persecution is “on account of” the group membership.
The BIA is accorded deference by Article III courts when it reasonably interprets immigration laws, provided that the meaning of the language in question is ambiguous. However, the “on account of” standard included by Congress in defining the term “refugee” is quite clear; its meaning is long established, and in fact, is not particular to immigration law.
The Supreme Court referenced this standard last year in a non-immigration case, Bostock v. Clayton County. The Court explained that the test
incorporates the “‘simple’” and “traditional” standard of but-for causation…. That form of causation is established whenever a particular outcome would not have happened “but for” the purported cause….In other words, a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause.11
In a 2015 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit applied this exact test in the asylum context to conclude that persecution was on account of family, determining that the petitioner’s “relationship to her son is why she, and not another person, was threatened with death if she did not allow him to join Mara 18.”12 But for some reason, the BIA has felt entitled to reject this established standard outside of the Fourth Circuit in favor of its own excessively restrictive one.
Had the proper test for nexus been employed in L-E-A-, asylum would have been granted. Under the facts of that case, once the familial relationship is removed from the equation, the asylum-seeker’s risk ceases to exist. However, the BIA instead imposed an incorrect test for nexus requiring evidence of an “animus against the family or the respondent based on their biological ties, historical status, or other features unique to that family unit.”13
As a former circuit court judge, Garland is particularly qualified to recognize the error in the Board’s approach, as well as the need to correct its course. The problem is compounded by the particular composition of the BIA at present. For example, of the ten immigration judges who were promoted to the BIA during the Trump administration, nine denied asylum more than 90 percent of the time (with the tenth denying 85 percent of such claims). Three had an asylum denial rate in excess of 98 percent.14
This matters, as those high denial rates were achieved in part by using faulty nexus determinations to deny asylum in domestic violence claims, even before the issuance of Matter of A-B-. This was often accomplished by mischaracterizing the abuse as merely personal in nature, referencing only the persecutor’s generally violent nature or inebriated state. The analysis in those decisions did not further examine whether gender might also have been one central reason that the asylum seeker, and not someone else, was targeted.
One BIA Member appointed under Trump recently found no nexus in a domestic violence claim by concluding that the persecutor had not targeted the asylum seeker because of her membership in the group consisting of “women,” but rather because she was his woman. There is no indication in the decision that the Board Member considered why the persecutor might view another human being as belonging to him and lacking the same rights he seems to enjoy. Might it have been because of her gender?
Without a correction through published regulations, there is little reason to expect different treatment of these claims moving forward. Let’s hope that the Attorney General views his recent action as only the first steps on a longer path to a correct application of the law.
Copyright 2021, Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.
The regulations under consideration at that time were never issued.
27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017) (“L-E-A- I”).
UNHCR, Guidelines on International Protection: Gender-Related Persecution within the context of Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (May 2002) at para. 30.
James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status, Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2014) at 442.
Hathaway and Foster, supra.
Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S.Ct. 1731, 1739 (2020).
Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, 784 F.3d 944, 950 (4th Cir. 2015).
Without progressive intervention, this is still headed for failure @ EOIR! A few things to keep in mind.
Former Attorney General, the late Janet Reno, ordered the same regulations on gender-based asylum to be promulgated more than two decades ago — never happened!
The proposed regulations that did finally emerge along the way (long after Reno’s departure) were horrible — basically an ignorant mishmash of various OIL litigation positions that would have actually made it easier for IJs to arbitrarily deny asylum (as if they needed any invitation) and easier for OIL to defend such bogus denials.
There is nobody currently at “Main Justice” or EOIR HQ qualified to draft these regulations! Without long overdue progressive personnel changes the project is almost “guaranteed to fail” – again!
Any regulations entrusted to the current “Miller Lite Denial Club” @ the BIA ☠️ will almost certainly be twisted out of proportion to deny asylum and punish women refugees, as well as deny due process and mock fundamental fairness. It’s going to take more than regulations to change the “culture of denial” and the “institutionalized anti-due-process corner cutting” @ the BIA and in many Immigration Courts.
Garland currently is mindlessly operating the “worst of all courts” — a so-called “specialized (not) court” where the expertise, independence, and decisional courage is almost all “on the outside” and sum total of the subject matter expertise and relevant experience of those advocating before his bogus “courts” far exceeds that of the “courts” themselves and of Garland’s own senior team! That’s why the deadly, embarrassing, sophomoric mistakes keep flowing into the Courts of Appeals on a regular basis.
No regulation can bring decisional integrity and expertise to a body that lacks both!
Any progressive who thinks Garland is going to solve the problem @ EOIR without “outside intervention” should keep this nifty “five month snapshot of EOIR under Biden” in mind:
Progressive judges appointed to BIA: 0
Progressive judges appointed to Immigration Court: 0
Progressives installed in leadership positions @ EOIR permanently or temporarily: 0
Billy Barr Selected Immigration Judges Appointed: 17
“Miller Lite” holdover individuals still holding key positions @ EOIR: many (only two removed to date)
Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of respondent: 2
Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of DHS: 9
That’s right, folks:Billy Barr and Stephen Millerhave had more influence and gotten more deference from Garland at EOIR than have the progressive experts and advocates who fought tirelessly to preserve due process and to get the Biden Administration into office. How does that a make sense?
“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color — Finally vacating two grotesquely wrong anti-female, anti-asylum precedents hasn’t ended the “Miller Lite Unhappy Hour” for migrants and their advocates at Garland’s foundering DOJ!
Progressives, advocates, and NGOs must keep raising hell until we finally get the “no-brainer,” long overdue, obvious, personnel, legal, structural, institutional, and cultural changes at EOIR that America needs! Waiting for Judge Garland to get around to it is like “Waiting for Godot!” Perhaps worse — I don’t recollect that anyone died waiting for Godot!
🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The BIA Denial Club, Never!🏴☠️
