Piling on the IJs

Immigration judges come under fire, Pamela A. MacLean, Staff reporter, National Law Journal 02-06-2006

An immigration judge in Newark, N.J., snores through a Colombian woman’s testimony of fears for her life before denying her asylum.

A Los Angeles immigration judge refuses asylum to a victim of the Rwandan genocide, faulting his lack of emotion in describing seeing his mother and three siblings hacked to pieces.

A Philadelphia immigration judge so bullied and badgered a Ghanian woman held as a sex slave by her father that an appeals court ordered the judge off the case.

Despite these types of allegations of abusive conduct by immigration judges around the country-documented in court papers-discipline is nearly nonexistent, a review by The National Law Journal has found.

Ira Kurzban, a nationally known immigration lawyer at Miami’s Kurzban, Kurzban, Weinger & Tetzeli, said that “[t]here are judges who really have no business being judges. They are unfit and should be removed.” He added: “The
problem is we don’t have a system to respond in an adequate way to disciplining errant immigration judges.”

For more, check out the Feb. 6 issue of teh National Law Journal

KJ