Immigration Watch International (2): ‘Unprecedented’ upheaval in immigration courts from Biden’s bid to reshape the agency

Monday, June 27, 2022

‘Unprecedented’ upheaval in immigration courts from Biden’s bid to reshape the agency

The Biden administration has been quietly packing the nation’s immigration courts, ousting Trump-hired judges and installing judges deemed to be friendlier to the immigrants whose cases they hear, in what one Justice Department official called an “unprecedented” injection of politics into the courts.

At least a half-dozen judges hired during the Trump years have been axed, including two this month in Arlington, Virginia.

They are part of a massive upheaval in the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which has seen four of its top officials pushed out of their jobs. The director was among the four and, for the first time in the agency’s history, was removed involuntarily.

“It’s an attempt to weaponize the courts along ideological lines,” said Matthew J. O’Brien, one of the two judges ousted from Arlington, Virginia. “It’s court packing on steroids. It’s court packing by deletion and then addition, because they’re getting rid of judges and they’re replacing them with people who meet their ideological framework.”

Mr. O’Brien was coming up on the end of his two-year probationary period, and the Justice Department, which runs EOIR, declined to convert his post to a permanent judgeship.

He said it’s exceptionally rare to use the probation period ouster, and it’s usually only done for cases of serious job misconduct such as sexual harassment. Trump administration officials said they couldn’t recall a single judge ousted after a probationary period because of politics.

The Biden administration has done it in more than a half-dozen cases, in addition to firing four senior officials.

“This turnover is unprecedented in the history of EOIR, and it all appears to be politically motivated in an effort to install Biden allies and pro-Democrat advocacy group supporters in both leadership and adjudicatory positions,” said one Justice Department official, who requested not to be named out of fear of retaliation.

Immigration judges, or IJs, are administrative positions hired by the Justice Department and don’t go through Senate confirmation.

There are about 590 judges, and they handle civil immigration matters, deciding whether a migrant challenging a pending deportation wins their case and gets to stay.

That makes immigration judges a central part of the Biden administration’s push to clear the dockets and grant leniency to longtime immigrants without documentation who don’t rise to the level of priority cases for deportation. Critics deride it as a “shadow amnesty.”

Mr. O’Brien said he had heard just two or three substantive cases over the last couple of months. A normal workload would have been many dozens of cases each month.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jun/20/doj-engaged-court-packing-steroids-immigration-jud/

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Background

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.

The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:

1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.

2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.

3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.

4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.

5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.

6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.

I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.

Immigration Watch International (2)

Monday, June 27, 2022

‘Unprecedented’ upheaval in immigration courts from Biden’s bid to reshape the agency

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