Federal Overhaul to Immigration Courts

From the Associated Press:

Federal officials are taking steps to overhaul the nation’s immigration courts — adding judges, improving training, and trying to reduce the influence of politics. But critics say these changes are too little and long overdue.

The efforts follow a flurry of studies, congressional testimony, and calls to address the crush of cases, complaints about erratic judges, and delays that can leave thousands of immigrants in limbo for years.

One of the most immediate changes is the addition of 38 judges and about 90 other employees, including clerks, in the last 18 months to help tackle the enormous workload. At the end of last year, the backlog had reached nearly 268,000 cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group based at Syracuse University.

The caliber of immigration judges themselves was at the heart of a recent political scandal that revealed how cronyism had tainted the system. Read more…

As I’ve said elsewhere, Congress or the administration needs to step in and give more tools to immigration judges so that they have more discretion to be reasonable.

bh