The Trump administration is effectively declaring that the nation’s roughly 700 immigration judges can no longer count on civil service rules that safeguard their independence by protecting them from arbitrary removal, according to a Department of Justice memo that was sent to the judges. The memo from DOJ—which oversees the immigration courts—was flagged for me by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, or IFPTE, the judges’ union, which believes this will make it far easier to fire judges without cause.
The judges and their representatives fear that this is designed to pave the way for the removal of judges who don’t consistently rule against migrants in deportation and asylum cases—and thus frustrate Trump and his hard-line immigration advisers. Replacing them with judges who will more reliably rule against migrants could theoretically speed up the pace of deportations.
“What they want to do is fire immigration judges that don’t issue rulings to their liking,” said Matthew Biggs, the president of IFPTE, “and replace them with judges that will simply rubber-stamp what President Trump wants.”
This represents a serious escalation of Trump’s assault on the immigration system. Last month, DOJ fired 20 immigration judges with no public rationale; those were largely probationary officials. Then, last week, DOJ let it be known that it will no longer observe restrictions that constrain the removal of administrative law judges, a category that decides federal government agency cases and doesn’t include most immigration judges.
But now, DOJ is signaling that it will disregard restrictions on removal for the broad category of immigration judges as well, according to the DOJ memo, which was addressed to all employees of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, the agency within the DOJ that oversees the immigration courts. The memo acknowledges that under current law, these judges benefit from “multiple layers of for-cause removal restrictions,” meaning they can’t be fired at will. But it adds that EOIR “may decline to recognize those restrictions if they are determined to be unconstitutional.”
Translated into plain English, this means that if restrictions on removing immigration judges are “determined” by the DOJ to be unconstitutional, they will no longer apply, immigration lawyers say. It’s only a matter of time until this “determination” is made.
You’re missing important factors like Trump getting help from SCOTUS and agency heads bowing down to him. Biden would never have been allowed to do a fraction of this because none of it would’ve reached the enforcement stage
And he can do that because when McTurtle stole Obama’s last SC seat, the DNC and dem establishment let it happen so that could be used as a reason for people to vote for Hillary…
This is entirely the point I was making.
Republicans fight, no matter what.
Dem establishment sees that and goes:
But they don’t seem to care if it actually happens or not, and if they win they’ll take no action to solve the problem, because in four years they’ll get to use it as another stick to convince people neoliberals are worth voting for.
If we ran someone who fought for the people, we’d stop having to worry about what Republicans did when they were in control, because Dems would stop losing easy elections.
Does that make sense?
They’ve been creating chaos because the only time a neoliberal seems like a good idea is if the only other option is chaos. It’s in their best (selfish) interest to never actually fix anything, especially since that’s why they get a lot of their campaign cash.
How were they supposed to override the “turtle” though? Sure they should’ve fought harder, but what legal options were there?
By saying the truth…
That the Senate has an opportunity to vote on SC picks, but that nowhere does it say it needs to happen.
So refusal to hold a vote means implicit approval of the selection.
This was widely talked about at the time, but I understand not everyone was politically active back then, and I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for paying attention now and asking questions
I did pay attention, and I saw noone serious think that would be legal to do
The biggest errors was not pushing harder against his first campaign, not pushing harder during the impeachments, letting Jan 6 go without another impeachment, and not calling out the billionaires helping his campaign with the intent to dismantle agencies that protect people, etc.
The SCOTUS appointments were big issues but due to the timing meaning they happened when dems lacked majorities there wasn’t much to do about them. Getting Trump out of the office is the only fix.
Only exception would’ve been SCOTUS reform immediately after Biden’s election when he had a majority, but the problem there is he couldn’t get enough votes for it
even if he could he would lose the votes of people like me who want a democracy. I would not be ok with this. So if they could they could get the votes of the ultra left that is left the way the ultra right is right now. which is not at all. and of course they would not because that group always said some new litmus test is not met and would still not vote because of it. but folks like me who want a nice functional social democracy and vote every election. to get folks like me you have to work to have a functional social democracy not the other side of the facist coin.
That comment kind of rambles around…
But I’m not saying Biden should have destroyed the federal government first.
I’m saying when Biden spent four years saying the president has no power over agencies, it was dangerous because that made people think trump as president wouldn’t be bad.
It’s not just that we wasted four years, it’s that those four years made people think the president is powerless, which allowed trump to become president again.
Again though its not just something to say. The independence of agencies is an important part of how our government functions and doing things like trump is unacceptable to me. Its just goofy to encourage that as a solution.
trump is threatening to replace agency heads who don’t comply…
That’s how Biden got every federal agency to return to office 2 days a week.
So…
Were you just not informed that Biden did what you’re now saying is unacceptable?
My issue is he just wouldn’t do it for things Dem voters wanted, only for things Republican politicians were complaining about.
Because I have a feeling you’re about to say that was ok when Biden did it…
He should not have. It is best for the agencies to make that call. heck its best for places to make that call at the lowest level and then be responsible for their output. Like teams. Trump is not just threatening though. He is flat out tearing it apart and putting in political apointees. Like the pressroom stuff it is things that were fixed in the past to avoid abuses of power. At some point someone says biden saying he has no power over agencies. Thats was just a stupid thing to say. Biden and all presidents run the agencies and have significant power over them. But the civil service has rights as well. They can replace people, especially agency heads, but are expected not to in a haphazard way in order to not destabilize the country. If every agency head had pushed back at biden he would have backed down because replacing every head would be unacceptable. But if only one or even a few had resisted they might have been replaced because that would have been acceptable. You are comparing the scaple with the axe and its just not the same.
So you think what makes Biden better, is he wouldn’t have went thru with it?
Or that he didn’t apply the same pressure to the FBI on Trump’s investigation, even tho that lack of pressure led to trump receiving zero consequences and becoming president again?
Even if you used paragraphs, I don’t think I’d have read all that. There’s no consistent logic, so I can’t use logic to help you, and that’s kind of my whole bag…
I can’t help you seeing the logic. Its not a black and white thing so it is hard to see or understand. Its something where you have to in some way have experience in similar things. Clubs or orgs for example. Its funny because you see him pressing a single head to do what he wants for what would be looked at as political gains. ie going after his enemies (this would get compared to what trump did with zelinski back when he wanted the hit job news article fabricated by ukranian press). You are comparing that to putting pressure across the agencies to do something that is relatively a-political (as much as things can be in an age when vaccines are political).
Then why did you say:
You said a president doing this would be unacceptable and lots of people, such as yourself, wouldn’t have voted for Biden if he did it…
I informed you that he did it.
So now it’s stopped being a black and white thing like you said.
Suddenly, there’s shades of grey and it’s 100% fine with you that Biden did the thing that you said would be unacceptable.
There’s zero logical consistency, so this is the last time you’ll ever hear from me.