DOJ Blocks Secret Tactic Of Immigration Judges
Sessions is restricting loopholes used by immigration judges to allow more immigrants into country.
Sessions slashes another Obama-era DOJ policy.
The Department of Justice issued a directive that blocks commonly used tactics by federal immigration judges, which could put hundreds of thousands of deportation cases back on federal court dockets, according to The New York Times. Liberals did not see this move coming!
On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the crackdown will reopen many closed cases on immigrants who are in the U.S. indefinitely, forcing judges to reevaluate their status and deport them. The DOJ is taking a massive hammer to the Obama-era loophole that allowed the case to be put off forever.
Sessions said the directive will put a freeze on a practice known as “administrative closure,” which temporarily removes a case from a judge’s docket and delays a hearing that could result in the immigrant being removed from the country.
In his statement, Sessions said immigration judges don’t have the legal authority to suspend immigration proceedings with this practice, saying it has allowed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to avoid deportation hearings.
To understand how effective the Trump administration has been regarding combating illegal immigration, look no further than recent comments made by David W. Leopold, the head of an immigration law group.
Leopold said the Trump administration has turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a “deportation assembly line,” which is actually a very big compliment for the president and those who want to secure the nation from threats.
Sessions revealed that between, Oct. 2011 to last Sept., 215,285 cases were administratively closed by federal immigration judges. So, nearly a quarter of a million illegals were allowed to skip an immigration hearing because of this loophole.
In fairness, not all immigration judges are giving illegals a pass. Currently, there are 350 immigration judges working for the DOJ who are tasked with taking on the estimated 680,000 cases on the immigration court backlog.
So, it was easier for some judges to temporarily freeze one case, in order to address another that may have been more pressing; but it has created a massive issue that must be addressed.
The Obama-era loophole played a major role in not only skyrocketing the backlog, it allowed at least 215,285 cases involving illegal immigrants to remain in the country. Now, Sessions is halting the loophole and giving these judges orders to speed it up.
The directive is geared toward addressing the immigration backlog and ramping up deportations of illegals who are not legally authorized to be in the country.
We are not a country if we don’t enforce the laws on the books, and illegals are no longer going to be given a pass.
