The Trump administration has taken another step to exercise more control over the immigration courts by relaxing qualifications for the hiring of judges.
On Thursday, the Administration implemented a rule that allows the Department of Justice to hire unleaded lawyers in the Immigration Law to serve as temporary immigration judges.
“This rule will allow the director, with the approval of the Attorney General, to customize the immigration courts with a sufficient number of well -trained and highly qualified judges to further reduce and finally eliminate the accumulation of pending cases,” according to the new rule.
Immigration judges are part of the Executive Branch, not from the Independent Judicial Branch of the United States Government.
Before the change, the Judges of Temporary Immigration (TIJ) were required to have been immigration judges or other types of government lawyers and lawyers from other executive branches, or who had at least 10 years of legal experience in the field of immigration law.
According to the notice published in the Federal Registry, “the department believes that the elimination of categorical regulatory prohibitions is prudent to ensure that the director and the attorney general may consider highly qualified candidates for TIJ appointments.”
The change of rule is needed, according to the administration, to address a large accumulation of immigration cases.
The new rule follows the dismissals or layoffs of judges, since President Donald Trump assumed the position, about 100 immigration judges have been fired or forced to resign. This has significantly reduced the number of judges, which stood in around 650, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the union that represents immigration judges. Around 3.7 million immigration cases are trapped in the order portfolio.
The critics of the new rule say that it is the form of the administration to settle the judges who will carry out the Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
“It is part of the same employer that we have seen anywhere else. They are trying to redo the Federal Labor Force so that, you know, they will not receive any resistance to what the White House wants to do,” said Elizabeth Taufa, senior policy strategy and lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resources Center.
Taufa questioned how the judges will be properly trained, since they are being hired for a period of six months and the new immigration judges generally suffer six weeks of training.
“Due process in the immigration court is doubtful on a regular day, and this is not a regular day,” Taufa said. “So I think we are going to see a continuous erosion of due process. I think we are going to see more people with a specific political bias that are hired in this role.”
The administration has adopted strategies to deport more quickly to immigrants, including the omission of some due process protections, which has led to judicial demands and battles. The Administration has also ordered immigration judges to dismiss cases so that immigrants who defy deportation or the request to remain in the country can be arrested when they leave the courtroom to be lined in an accelerated deportation elimination procedure.
In Florida last month, Trump said he would approve a plan proposed by Governor Ron Desantis to allow the members of the General Judge of the General Judge (JAG) of the National Guard (JAG) to serve as immigration judges at the detention center inaugurated in the Everglades, called Cocodrilo Alcatraz.
