New quotas undermine independence of immigration judges, union head says

The independence of immigration judges is being threatened by new quotas and deadlines being implemented Oct. 1 by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Judge Ashley Tabaddor, a federal immigration judge in Los Angeles, told a National Press Club Headliners news conference Sept. 21.

Speaking in her role as president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union representing more than 300 immigration judges throughout the country, Tabaddor said judges will be required to complete a quota of 700 cases per year or risk being fired. In addition, judges will be expected to complete 95 percent of their cases during the first hearing, she said.

This is an “unprecedented act which compromises the integrity of the court and undermines the decisional independence of our immigration judges,” she said, “all in the name of addressing the 750,000 backlog of pending cases which continue to grow with every action of this administration.” Judges will be pressured to complete cases quickly and could possibly pit their job security against the interest of immigrants, she added.

Tabaddor contended that the administration’s “one size fits all” approach will not work because the judges deal with cases of widely varying complexity. She said judges would have an average of about two and one-half hours to complete cases. This would be impossible, she said, for complicated asylum matters that can include hours of testimony and hundreds of pages of documents.

The union has requested information from the Justice Department on how it came up with the quotas and deadlines but has not received an answer, Tabaddor said. While the union cannot bargain over the specifics of the new policies, she said, there is bargaining going on about the impact and implementation of these policies. When they are implemented she expects numerous grievances to be filed.

Tabaddor said the immigration court has a “fundamental flaw,” being housed in the Department of Justice and being headed by the U.S. attorney general. As a result “the decision-making authority of our judges to be independent decision makers is under unprecedented attack,” she said. She also blamed the backlog for the same flaw of the court being in a law enforcement agency where for decades “we were neglected as a priority. Now the backlog is being used as a political tool to advance the current law enforcement policy,” she said.

Tabaddor called on Congress to fix the problem by removing the immigration court from the Justice Department and making it an independent court. She said that there are a number of organizations in support of this change and the Federal Bar Association has drafted a bill that is circulating in the House of Representatives. She said she expects the bill to be introduced “soon.”