Latest news with #ExecutiveOfficeforImmigrationReview
Boston Globe
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
In immigration cases, a difference in duties and powers between judges
Immigration judges are employees of the Justice Department and are appointed by the US attorney general, serving in the executive branch. They work for the Executive Office for Immigration Review and sit on civil cases, deciding whether immigrants may remain in the country or be removed. They oversee hearings that may involve complex cases, including applications for asylum. They lack the independence of federal judges, who work for the judicial branch and are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. They also lack the same job protections: immigration judges may be fired or reassigned by the attorney general, while federal judges enjoy lifetime tenure. Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would establish an independent immigration court, as well as job protection for judges, but it has languished in recent years. Advertisement Who are the current immigration judges? Soon after President Trump took office in January, he fired the acting head of the US immigration court system and three other top officials. In February, the Trump administration Also in February, the Justice Department issued a job alert, announcing 'Make a Difference — Apply for an Immigration Judge Position.' Advertisement That would give the Trump administration a significant influence on the makeup of immigration judges on the bench. Job requirements include a law degree, active bar membership and seven years of post-bar-admission legal experience. The job alert says the role of an immigration judge 'is to safeguard our nation through the proper application of immigration laws. For the thousands of aliens who appear in immigration court each year, the Immigration Judge is both the face and the representative of the Department of Justice. Each and every day, Immigration Judges make decisions that impact both the individuals that come before the court and the public at large. Each and every day, the work of an Immigration Judge matters .' How have the judges' separate duties played out in recent cases? On Wednesday, a after being taken into custody last month in Somerville by masked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. She had been held overnight in Vermont after her arrest, then placed on a flight to Louisiana. Öztürk's lawyers filed a civil suit, now pending in US District Court in Vermont, alleging that the government violated her free-speech rights and due process rights by revoking her visa solely because she co-authored a pro-Palestinian Advertisement In a court filing Wednesday urging the federal judge to order the government to immediately return Öztürk to Vermont, Öztürk's lawyers argued that the immigration judge found she was a flight risk and danger to the community based solely on a Department of State memorandum citing the op-ed. The State Department document, 'cannot support any serious, good-faith finding of flight risk or dangerousness, rendering it all the more clear that Ms. Öztürk relies entirely on this Court to obtain relief from her unlawful arrest and detention,' Öztürk's lawyers wrote. Shelley Murphy can be reached at
New York Times
16-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Administration Directs Judges to Deny Asylum Without Hearings
A new Trump administration policy urges immigration judges to swiftly deny asylum to migrants whose applications they deem unlikely to succeed. The swift denials would circumvent the normal hearing process, which typically takes years to wind through the backlogged courts. The guidance from the Justice Department, which took effect April 11, states that judges should consider dropping 'legally deficient' asylum cases without holding a hearing. Doing that would keep some people who claim to be fleeing persecution in their home countries from having any opportunity to present their case to a judge. 'Adjudicators have the duty to efficiently manage their dockets,' Sirce Owen, acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the immigration courts, wrote in the policy memo. 'It is clear from the almost four million pending cases on E.O.I.R.'s docket that has not been happening.' The memo, sent to staff members, says that immigration judges should take 'all appropriate action to immediately resolve cases on their dockets that do not have viable legal paths for relief or protection from removal.' The new policy would inevitably result in judges issuing deportation orders before fully holding what are known as merits hearings, in which asylum applicants can present their claims in detail. Immigration judges have the authority to decide whether an immigrant can remain in the United States or should be removed. The judges are employees of the Justice Department, not the federal courts, so they are expected to follow policies set by the agency. The Trump administration took office promising mass deportations of immigrants who are in the country unlawfully. Hundreds of thousands of people who crossed the southern border have applied for asylum and are shielded from removal until their cases have been adjudicated. Immigration scholars said that the new policy was an attempt to circumvent regulations governing that process and brush aside the complexities of asylum law in favor of swift deportations. 'Immigration judges must use independent judgment, and under the statutes and existing regulations, they must allow a person to submit, supplement and testify to the facts supporting their request for asylum,' said Lenni Benson, a professor of immigration law at New York Law School. To qualify for asylum, an applicant must persuade a judge that if they returned to their home country, they would be at risk of injury or death because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The Justice Department memo states that merit hearings should be reserved for asylum cases where there are factual disputes. 'No existing regulation requires a hearing when there are no factual issues in dispute, including when the facts underlying the legal claim for asylum are undisputed, but the claim itself is legally deficient,' it said. Mary Giovagnoli, an immigration lawyer who served in Democratic and Republican administrations, said judges were essentially being told, 'If there is any doubt about the case, you shouldn't hold a hearing.' Such a policy, she added, 'is flipping the notion of due process on its head.' The backlog in the immigration courts ballooned in recent years as the number of people crossing the border soared. Many migrants who have filed asylum claims did indeed flee persecution and may have strong cases. But others came mainly for economic or personal reasons rather than to escape persecution, and have applied for asylum anyway, knowing that the lengthy court process would allow them to stay in the United States at least for several years, even if their application was ultimately denied. As of early this year, there were some 700 immigration judges nationwide, each of whom may handle between 500 and 700 cases a year — too few to make much headway against the nearly four million cases now pending in the immigration courts, about two million of them involving asylum claims. Though President Trump has promised to add more judges to tackle the backlog, his administration has fired at least 20 of them as part of the major staff reductions across the federal government. The new policy could present special challenges for asylum seekers who do not have lawyers. About half of all asylum applicants have no lawyer, according to a New York Times analysis of immigration court data. In many of those cases, immigrant advocates say, the applicants have been unable to draft a complete application on their own that lays out the true merits of their asylum claims. 'Navigating a foreign legal system in a foreign language without legal counsel makes it more than likely that applicants may inadvertently submit incomplete asylum petitions,' said Careen Shannon, an immigration lawyer. 'The outcome for an asylum seeker can literally make the difference between life or death,' she said.
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Immigration Judges and Court Staff Take Payout Offers to Leave
A number of immigration judges have accepted government payout offers to leave, a union official said on Thursday, further depleting an overwhelmed system that President Trump had promised to fortify. A total of 85 employees, including 18 judges, at the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review accepted the government's deferred resignation offer or early retirement. The Trump administration previously fired 29 others from that office, according to the union official, including the office's top leaders. About 40 of the more than 700 immigration judges in place when Mr. Trump took office have now been fired or agreed to leave. The judges, who are part of the administrative court system under the Justice Department rather than part of the judicial branch, make decisions about asylum claims and have the power to order someone removed from the country. Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to hire more of them to address a growing backlog that can make cases stretch for years. A loss of immigration judges is likely to undercut Mr. Trump's efforts to deport millions of immigrants, since delays in adjudicating immigration claims contribute to the number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States while waiting for their cases to be resolved. 'Donald Trump ran for office promising to boost deportations, but as president, his administration's policies are actually decreasing the number of immigration judges and judge teams who hold deportation hearings,' Matthew Biggs, the president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, said in a statement on Thursday. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On average, each judge handles 500 to 700 cases a year. The court has a backlog of more than 3.7 million cases, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The backlog is a byproduct of an immigration system under strain for decades. Since it can be years before an asylum seeker, for example, appears in court, many immigrants start putting down roots and growing their families in communities across the country. 'Immigration judges are hard to replace given their specialized knowledge and legal experience,' Mr. Biggs said. 'It takes at least a year to recruit, hire, train and conduct a background check on a new judge.' Both Democrats and Republicans have supported adding more judges to the system. The administration has also fired judges on the Board of Immigration Appeals. 'This makes no sense,' Mr. Biggs said. The Justice Department last month issued a memo stating that immigration judges could be fired at will, suggesting more cuts would be coming.
Washington Post
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
‘We will not falter.' Trump-era resignation letters take center stage.
Six weeks into a second term in which he promises to make America 'great again,' Donald Trump's presidency is contributing to a resurgence of a different sort — the art of the well-crafted resignation letter. Dozens of federal officials and employees have quit in protest or been forced out amid the seismic upheavals the new administration has unleashed across government agencies. And a number of the departing have documented their discontent in missives that have found their way into public view. Their letters range from the poignant — like the goodbye note from a disabled veteran in the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review who said a 'relentless stream of unwarranted criticism' from top administration officials had harmed his health — to the pointed, including a memo from a top DOJ communications adviser who blamed Trump appointees for ushering in a 'toxic work environment.' There was the eloquent departure note from David Lebryk, the Treasury Department's highest-ranking career official, which he used to remind remaining colleagues that their work 'makes a difference and is so very important to the country.' And the more impudent letter from a National Institutes of Health official who likened Trump to a terrorist. Taken together, the burst of epistolary activity — from career bureaucrats who in many cases worked under Democratic and Republican presidents — amounts to a collective cry of frustration in response to an administration they feel has belittled and discounted their work. 'We will not bend. We will not falter,' wrote James E. Dennehy, the top agent in the FBI's New York field office, as he announced his forced retirement to his staff in an email Monday that was obtained by The Washington Post. 'We will not sacrifice what is right for anything or anyone.' Since taking office, Trump has repeatedly derided the federal workforce as bloated, laid off workers and signed executive orders aimed at making it easier to fire career civil servants. He has accused some federal employees of seeking to frustrate his agenda, calling them members of what he's dubbed the bureaucratic 'deep state.' Dennehy, who had led the New York FBI office since September, said he was not given a reason for the ultimatum he received last week to retire or be fired. But it came days after Attorney General Pam Bondi publicly accused his office, without providing evidence, of withholding investigative files tied to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In another publicly leaked all-hands email last month, Dennehy urged his staff to stay calm and 'dig in' as he pushed back against demands from Trump administration officials to hand over the names of agents who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He alluded to the language of that message in his note marking his departure, which also detailed the 'top 10' things he would miss about the FBI. 'I've been told many times in my life, 'When you find yourself in a hole, sometimes it's best to quit digging,'' the former Marine wrote. 'Screw that. I will never stop defending this joint.' The FBI declined to comment on Dennehy's letter. He is one of many to register his grievances on the way out the door. Last month, Jim Jones, director of the Food and Drug Administration's food division, assailed the 'indiscriminate firing' of dozens of his employees and recent rhetoric from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy in his resignation letter, addressed to the FDA's acting commissioner. 'It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump administration's disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda … it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role,' Jones wrote. Twenty-one apolitical federal technology staffers whose work was subsumed into the U.S. DOGE Service quit together last week, using their joint sign-off to condemn the tactics of Trump adviser Elon Musk and his appointees working to slash the size of the federal government. 'We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,' the resigning employees wrote. Joshua M. Lashbrook — the disabled veteran and chief information officer at the Executive Office for Immigration Review's Office of Information Technology — wrote that his 'service to the nation has never been about politics' and blamed criticism and negative remarks for his decision to leave. 'I have come to the painful realization that it is no longer healthy for me to remain in this position and that it is time for me to step away,' he wrote last week. And in a particularly barbed kiss-off, which he posted to LinkedIn, Nathaniel Brought — former director of the National Institutes of Health's Executive Secretariat — accused Trump of a host of misdeeds, including overseeing a 'lifelong fight against justice' and 'keeping billionaires happy on the backs of the poor.' 'I did not make sure terrorists met their makers so that I could watch one lead and then attack my country,' wrote Brought, whose 23-year government career also included stints with the National Security Agency and as an active-duty Marine. Asked about the letters, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded with the written equivalent of a shrug. 'President Trump is only interested in the best and most qualified people who are also willing to implement his America First Agenda on behalf of the American people,' she wrote in a statement. 'It's not for everyone, and that's okay.' Nowhere has the friction between Trump administration officials and their employees come into sharper relief than in the exchanges that emerged from the Justice Department last month in a seven-day span in which at least nine veteran attorneys resigned in protest. They included a top career official overseeing criminal prosecutions in the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia and the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The latter, Danielle Sassoon, accused top Justice Department officials of engaging in a 'quid pro quo' with attorneys for New York Mayor Eric Adams. Adams's attorneys, she wrote, had offered the mayor's support for Trump immigration policies in exchange for the dismissal of a corruption case against him — an accusation the mayor's lawyers have denied. 'Rather than be rewarded, Adams's advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer,' Sassoon wrote in her Feb. 12 letter explaining that she was resigning instead of carrying out an order from acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove to drop the case. Sassoon highlighted her past work clerking for conservative judges like J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, citing the commitment she said both men had instilled in her to 'uphold the rule of law.' 'I have always considered it my obligation to pursue justice impartially, without favor to the wealthy or those who occupy important public office, or harsher treatment for the less powerful,' she said. Bove, in a letter of his own, accused Sassoon of 'insubordination and misconduct' and 'losing sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.' Others — including almost all the supervisors in the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section in Washington — followed Sassoon out the door, with some offering even more pointed goodbyes. Ryan Crosswell, a Justice Department trial attorney with a decade of experience, cited a meeting in which he said Bove threatened to fire the department's remaining public corruption lawyers if one of them would not volunteer to help end the Adams case. 'I cannot work for someone who invokes leadership after forcing dedicated public servants to choose between termination and a dismissal so plainly at odds with prosecutorial principals,' Crosswell wrote in a message to Bondi. Bove has made clear he isn't opposed to more departures. In an acidly worded statement about the Adams case issued days after Crosswell's letter, the acting deputy attorney general said all Justice Department attorneys should be committed to supporting 'our critical mission.' For anyone who found themselves wavering, Bove added, 'templates for resignation letters' are widely available online. Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump immigration order having negative impacts at Tacoma detention center, lawsuit says
Amid the whirlwind of executive orders President Donald Trump issued on his first day in office, one related to illegal immigration has led to curtailed access to basic legal information for noncitizens in deportation proceedings, according to a lawsuit filed last week, including those held at the detention facility in Tacoma. The lawsuit was filed Friday against the U.S. government by 10 nonprofit organizations that receive federal funding to operate programs that educate noncitizens in deportation cases around the country about their rights in the immigration process. One of the plaintiffs is the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which connects immigrants detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center — as well as noncitizens who aren't in detention — with free legal representation, education and legal services. The organization runs one of the four programs at the center of the lawsuit, a Legal Orientation Program, which includes having staff travel to the detention center in Tacoma four to five times a week to give 'Know Your Rights' presentations to people who are detained and don't have an attorney. Two days after Trump's Jan. 20 executive order, 'Protecting the American People Against Invasion,' the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review issued a stop-work order halting funding for Legal Orientation Programs and the three other programs, according to the lawsuit. The stop-work order was put in place to audit the programs under Trump's order, a copy of the complaint states, but it did not explain how long it would last or if the stop was meant to be temporary. Since then, 'Know Your Rights' presentations at the NWIPC in Tacoma have stopped, and the team that gave them has lost access to daily rosters of people detained at the facility and bi-weekly reports on their upcoming court dates, Vanessa Gutierrez, a deputy director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said in a sworn statement filed in the case. Posters inside the detention center on the Tideflats that had contact information for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project were taken down from inside housing pods, according to Gutierrez, and Legal Orientation Program staff have gotten pushback about meeting with people individually from the private contractor that runs the facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, The Geo Group. Gutierrez said in the written statement that even a few missed Legal Orientation Program sessions could significantly alter the trajectory of someone's case. 'Without timely access to legal counsel, detained individuals might not be informed of their rights, which could lead them to inadvertently waive important legal protections or miss critical opportunities to contest their detention or removal,' Gutierrez wrote. Attorneys for the U.S. government have 60 days to respond to the lawsuit after receiving a summons in the case, according to court records. So far no response has been filed. The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the court to grant an injunction to stop the government from withholding funding for the four programs, allow the 10 nonprofits access to immigration courts and detention facilities they have historically received and to replace posters and other educational materials that were removed from facilities. A status conference in the case occurred Monday, according to court records, and a joint status report was expected to be filed within a week. The programming at issue in the case is implemented by the Executive Office for Immigration Review by contracting with the Acacia Center for Justice, the complaint states, which then subcontracts with nonprofit organizations to administer the programs across the country. Most recently, Congress appropriated $28 million for Legal Orientation Programs and Immigration Court Helpdesk programs in the 2024 Consolidated Appropriations Act, according to the lawsuit. Trump's administration tried to put a stop to the Legal Orientation Program during his first term, in 2018, according to the lawsuit, by abruptly stopping funding to audit the programs, but the effort failed. A week after it was announced, U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committee members voiced support for Legal Orientation Programs and Immigration Court Helpdesk programs. According to the lawsuit, the officials wrote that the Department of Justice was 'systematically deconstructing basic due process protections for immigrants.' Members of the U.S. Senate also called on the Department of Justice to restart the programs, including Democratic Washington state Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the programs could continue during the audit after program providers threatened legal action, according to the lawsuit, and after then-director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review James McHenry testified to Congress that he disregarded previous studies that found the Legal Orientation Program saved money. The renewed stoppage of funding comes at a particularly urgent time, according to the lawsuit, as detentions and deportations are increasing 'exponentially.' Documents in the court file state that the NWIPC in Tacoma currently houses about 800 to 1,000 people at any given time. It has a capacity to detain up to 1,575 people, and Gutierrez said her organization fully expects it to be at capacity soon. Unlike criminal cases in the United States, people in immigration proceedings don't have a right to an attorney, and the vast majority of detained individuals represent themselves. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 79% of noncitizens in deportation proceedings in fiscal year 2022 didn't have access to counsel. Often, the only attorney many people held in immigration detention ever see are providers of these now-stopped programs, according to the lawsuit. 'And Program providers often are the only outsiders to witness noncitizens in detention or observe the conditions of their detention,' the complaint states. 'By denying Program providers access, Defendants ensure that no legal service providers' eyes are watching what the government does inside.' The lawsuit says that stopping the programs and restricting the nonprofits' access to detention facilities would result in a less efficient and costlier immigration system, forcing judges to spend more time explaining removal proceedings and ensuring noncitizens understand what is happening in their cases. After the stop-work order was issued, a 'policy manual' was posted to the Executive Office for Immigration Review's website, according to the lawsuit, which claimed that the general Legal Orientation Program was a 'wasteful program.' According to the lawsuit, a 2012 study done by the Executive Office for Immigration Review found that the Legal Orientation Program saved the government nearly $18 million over a three-year period. The savings were actually greater, according to the lawsuit, which noted that although Judiciary Committee members characterized it that way, the program actually saved nearly $18 million per year.
