The Trump administration is effectively declaring that the nation’s roughly 700 immigration judges can no longer count on civil service rules that safeguard their independence by protecting them from arbitrary removal, according to a Department of Justice memo that was sent to the judges. The memo from DOJ—which oversees the immigration courts—was flagged for me by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, or IFPTE, the judges’ union, which believes this will make it far easier to fire judges without cause.
The judges and their representatives fear that this is designed to pave the way for the removal of judges who don’t consistently rule against migrants in deportation and asylum cases—and thus frustrate Trump and his hard-line immigration advisers. Replacing them with judges who will more reliably rule against migrants could theoretically speed up the pace of deportations.
“What they want to do is fire immigration judges that don’t issue rulings to their liking,” said Matthew Biggs, the president of IFPTE, “and replace them with judges that will simply rubber-stamp what President Trump wants.”
This represents a serious escalation of Trump’s assault on the immigration system. Last month, DOJ fired 20 immigration judges with no public rationale; those were largely probationary officials. Then, last week, DOJ let it be known that it will no longer observe restrictions that constrain the removal of administrative law judges, a category that decides federal government agency cases and doesn’t include most immigration judges.
But now, DOJ is signaling that it will disregard restrictions on removal for the broad category of immigration judges as well, according to the DOJ memo, which was addressed to all employees of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, the agency within the DOJ that oversees the immigration courts. The memo acknowledges that under current law, these judges benefit from “multiple layers of for-cause removal restrictions,” meaning they can’t be fired at will. But it adds that EOIR “may decline to recognize those restrictions if they are determined to be unconstitutional.”
Translated into plain English, this means that if restrictions on removing immigration judges are “determined” by the DOJ to be unconstitutional, they will no longer apply, immigration lawyers say. It’s only a matter of time until this “determination” is made.
And he can do that because when McTurtle stole Obama’s last SC seat, the DNC and dem establishment let it happen so that could be used as a reason for people to vote for Hillary…
This is entirely the point I was making.
Republicans fight, no matter what.
Dem establishment sees that and goes:
But they don’t seem to care if it actually happens or not, and if they win they’ll take no action to solve the problem, because in four years they’ll get to use it as another stick to convince people neoliberals are worth voting for.
If we ran someone who fought for the people, we’d stop having to worry about what Republicans did when they were in control, because Dems would stop losing easy elections.
Does that make sense?
They’ve been creating chaos because the only time a neoliberal seems like a good idea is if the only other option is chaos. It’s in their best (selfish) interest to never actually fix anything, especially since that’s why they get a lot of their campaign cash.
How were they supposed to override the “turtle” though? Sure they should’ve fought harder, but what legal options were there?
By saying the truth…
That the Senate has an opportunity to vote on SC picks, but that nowhere does it say it needs to happen.
So refusal to hold a vote means implicit approval of the selection.
This was widely talked about at the time, but I understand not everyone was politically active back then, and I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for paying attention now and asking questions
I did pay attention, and I saw noone serious think that would be legal to do
The biggest errors was not pushing harder against his first campaign, not pushing harder during the impeachments, letting Jan 6 go without another impeachment, and not calling out the billionaires helping his campaign with the intent to dismantle agencies that protect people, etc.
The SCOTUS appointments were big issues but due to the timing meaning they happened when dems lacked majorities there wasn’t much to do about them. Getting Trump out of the office is the only fix.
Only exception would’ve been SCOTUS reform immediately after Biden’s election when he had a majority, but the problem there is he couldn’t get enough votes for it