A group of 120 organizations led by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) asked the newly elected Congress that takes office in January, to make the Immigration Court independent to safeguard due process.
In a letter to legislator Zoe Lofgren, chair of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, the group expressed “our continued and strong support” for the creation of an independent Immigration Court that will not operates under the command of the Attorney General.
“Almost a year has passed since the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship held a hearing where the crisis facing the immigration courts and the need to establish an independent state of justice that safeguards due process was exposed,” he says.
“As you know, that hearing highlighted the many flaws in the immigration court structure and the need for the creation of an immigration court that does not live under the Department of Justice,” he adds.
System attack
Since Donald Trump came to the White House in January 2017, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has developed a systematic attack to disarm the immigration system in force since the 1960s.
The government’s goal has been to implement the ‘zero tolerance’ policy to stop undocumented immigration and also legal immigration.
The changes have been operated through executive orders and memoranda, a mechanism that left out the support of both houses of Congress.
In January, lawyers and judges, alarmed by the restrictions imposed on due process, judges and lawyers simultaneously asked the government to protect and respect the due process of immigration to guarantee the delivery of “fair and timely decisions and to regain the trust of the public”, but the calls were ignored by both the White House and the DOJ.
Politicized system
In the last year, AILA has denounced that the main cause of the deterioration in the immigration system has been “politicization”, a problem that has taken root and that has been generated “for years” causing serious problems that need to be solved.
He adds that previous governments “have made repeated political decisions, sometimes not necessarily efficient, legal or rational, but because they are convenient.”
And he has warned that “this flawed system has allowed the Trump administration to” transform immigration courts into an enforcement agency (of immigration law) instead of being a fair and neutral arbiter. “
The changes implemented in the last four years “have undermined the independence of judges and undermined due process,” he says.
“Judges are being pressured to make decisions at a breakneck pace at the cost of precision. At the same time, the DOJ and the EOIR (Immigration Court) are stripping judges of their ability to control their files, slowing down the processing of cases and reducing efficiency, ”indicates a report published earlier this year.
The last assault
In November, four months after the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) determined that immigration judges had full labor rights, a decision that allowed them to remain unionized and exercise in accordance with due immigration process and not obey orders from the Attorney General, a panel from the same entity reversed the sentence and accepted the arguments presented by the government.
The second ruling, delivered a day before the presidential election, indicated that judges cannot unionize because they are “government officials” and, therefore, cannot form or be members of a labor organization.
The decision stripped more than 450 federal employees of their collective bargaining rights.
The NAIJ said the ruling was “outrageous” and that it was “outraged, though not surprised” by the decision.
The entity also denounced the permanent assaults by the government to undo the union and “decimate the bargaining rights” of the judges in an effort designed to “transform the federal workforce into an organism at will and deeply politicized.”
“We have lost this battle, but we will win the war,” the union said. And he added that “we were prepared for this day, we will continue fighting and we are studying each and every one of the legal and other options available.”
The judges’ claims are contained in the letter sent to Lofgren.
The new Congress will start the 2021-2222 session from January 3. On January 5, the State of Georgia will hold second-round elections that will determine control of the Senate, until now in the hands of the Republican Party, while the House of Representatives maintains the Democratic majority.
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