US Lawyer Group Urges Congress To Scrap Immigration Courts, Create New System

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) Overwhelming caseloads and political interference has crippled the existing system of US immigration courts to the point where Congress needs to step in and create an entirely new system insulated from the Department of Justice, the American Bar Association said in a report on Wednesday.

"The immigration courts are facing an existential crisis," the report said. "The current system is irredeemably dysfunctional and on the brink of collapse, and the only way to resolve the serious systemic issues within the immigration court system is through transferring the immigration court functions to a newly-created Article I court."

The American Bar Association argued that the recommended approach is the best and most practical way "to ensure due process and insulate the courts from the capriciousness of the political environment.

"

The existing system gives the Justice Department's board of Immigration Appeals the power to overturn decisions by immigration judges, whereas Article I courts, sometimes called legislative courts, can operate outside the Department, the report said.

Examples of Article I courts include the US Court of Military Appeals, the US Court of Veterans Appeals and the US Tax Court.

The report noted that a backlog of cases pending before immigration courts had grown from 262,000 cases in 2010 to 760,000 as of December 2018. Moreover, an additional 330,000 previously settled cases could be revived and added to the caseload based on opinions by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The report also said that politicized hiring of judges and changes in enforcement policies undermine immigration judges' ability to act as neutral arbitrators of the law.