Sessions Pushes To Speed Up Immigration Courts, Deportations
NPR reports on the efforts of Attorney General Jeff Session to ramp up deportations of immigrants in the country illegally. But one thing has been standing in its way: immigration judges often put these cases on hold. Immigration law professor Nancy Morawetz is interviewed in the story.
Attorney General Sessions is considering overruling the judges.
One practice that’s particularly infuriating to Sessions and other immigration hardliners is called “administrative closure.” It allows judges to put deportation proceedings on hold indefinitely.
“Basically they have legalized the person who was coming to court, because they were illegally in the country,” Sessions said during a speech in December.
Sessions is using his authority over the immigration court system to review a number of Board of Immigration Appeals decisions. If he overturns those decisions, thousands of other cases could be affected. In this way, he is expected to end administrative closure, or scale it back.
The attorney general may also limit when judges can grant continuances, and who qualifies for asylum in the United States.
This could reshape the nation’s immigration courts, which are overseen by the Justice Department, and make them move faster. Sessions says he’s trying to clear a massive backlog of cases that’s clogging the docket.
KJ