White House Declares the ‘Era of Amnesty’ in the Immigration Courts ‘Is Over’

The White House declared this week that the “Era of Amnesty Is Over: President Trump Restores Rule of Law to Immigration Court”, as both immigration judge (IJ) backlogs and asylum grants decline. That same day, the New York Times published an article, “How Trump Purged Immigration Judges to Speed Up Deportations”, making many of the same points. Here’s where the two analyses converge — and the very big points the Times missed.

What IJs Do

With (notable) exceptions, DHS cannot deport aliens from the United States without first obtaining an “order of removal” issued at the end of removal proceedings conducted under section 240 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

IJs — administrative adjudicators within DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) — conduct the trial-level portion of those section 240 removal proceedings, and the hearings themselves can be broken down into two stages.

In the first stage, the IJ reviews the Notice to Appear (NTA), the civil charging document filed by DHS (which is akin to a complaint or indictment in criminal proceedings) to determine whether the alien (the “respondent”) is removable as charged.

Most respondents concede removability to move to the second stage of those proceedings, where the IJ determines whether the respondent is eligible for some protection, immigration benefit, or waiver (collectively: “relief”) that would allow the removable respondent to remain in the United States.