Immigration judges were not exempt from the Trump administration’s mass layoff spree, but the staggering amount of pending immigration cases means we actually need immigration judges. So, will the government be re-hiring these people with actual experience and qualifications to be temporary immigration judges? Of course not. Instead, the job of temporary immigration judge is now open to people with no immigration law experience.
Sure, why not. It used to be that to be an immigration judge, you had to practice immigration law for at least 10 years or previously been an appellate immigration judge or an administrative law judge for the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Now, all you have to do to get the gig is suck up to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Under a final rule issued by the EOIR on Thursday, Bondi now has the power to appoint anyone as a temporary immigration judge for a six-month period, with as many extensions of that six-month period as Bondi wants. So, not really temporary then. The rule also says that it no longer “serves EOIR’s interest” to ensure immigration judges have immigration law experience. To be fair, that’s not wrong, because “EOIR’s interest” is no longer that of desiring a functioning immigration court system. Under Donald Trump’s administration, EOIR’s interest is in brutally deporting as many people as possible, immigration laws be damned.
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The purported justification for this is to address the backlog of 3.4 million immigration cases. And the ranks of immigration law judges are decimated, with nearly 15% of them having been fired or taking a buyout. However, we know that this is not an administration that is exactly committed to the swift resolution of justice, particularly when it comes to immigrants. No, what this is really about is destroying immigration judges’ thin veneer of independence.
Immigration judges are not Article III judges—as in they are not part of the judicial branch. The EOIR is part of the Department of Justice, so immigration judges are career DOJ attorneys rather than presidential appointees. Sure, that means they have always been somewhat susceptible to the whims of the DOJ, but they were still subject to required employment qualifications and union protections and the like, providing a bit of insulation. Now, the temporary judges are wholly beholden to Bondi, essentially ensuring what you’ll get is a passel of vicious little mini-Bondis or such whose sole goal is to participate in the administration’s lawless immigration crackdown.
However, EOIR is furious, FURIOUS, that you would think such a thing. From the final rule: “To the extent commenters cast doubt on the ability of Department attorneys to serve as neutral arbiters and thus question whether they should be allowed to serve as TIJs, the Department disagrees with such unsupported accusations.”
Isn’t it cute when they pretend to have integrity and get all huffy that it has been besmirched somehow?
Immigration judges have already been acting in concert with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to dismiss pending immigration cases so that migrants can be arrested by ICE agents immediately after leaving the courthouse. But god forbid some of them might think independently of Pam Bondi and Donald Trump and deportation architect Stephen Miller and we can’t have that.
So, they’ve gotta fill the vacuum created by the mass firing of qualified people by stuffing unqualified lackeys in there—lackeys who know they have a job only because they will do what Bondi wants, which is to continue to deform and dismantle justice for immigrants in America.