- Almost seven out of 10 orders issued by IJs in cases involving families in 10 courts between September 24, 2019, and January 24, 2020 — 36,115 — were in absentia removal orders, issued when the respondents failed to appear.
- Those respondents were likely economic migrants who had gamed the immigration laws to enter and remain in the United States.
- EOIR statistics back up an anecdote from the head of the immigration judges’ union in testimony before Congress.
Recent testimony from the head of the immigration judges’ (IJs’) union, and statistics from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), suggest that most family units (FMUs, that is, an adult entering illegally with a child) are not showing up for court once they are set free in the United States. Their failure to appear suggests that they simply gamed loopholes in our immigration laws to gain entry into this country, to live and work indefinitely.
In her written testimony on January 29, 2020, before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship on “The State of Judicial Independence and Due Process in U.S. Immigration Courts”, IJ A. Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, complained about the 700-case completion goal that is part of performance metrics EOIR had set for IJs in 2018, and about the difficulty that some IJs have in meeting that goal. (NB: I was a witness at that hearing, as well).
At the bottom of p. 4 of that testimony is an interesting passage:
Not only are these metrics unrealistic and ill-conceived, they have no sound basis in past productivity. EOIR management has steadfastly refused to explain how these metrics were determined, particularly how the 700 completions per judge per year is valid in light of the great variety of cases and dockets that judges carry across the country. For example, one judge completed more cases in the last three months than he did in the entire past fiscal year, all due to the switch of his docket from a complex detained docket to a non-detained “family unit” docket with multiple completions per single session. [Emphasis added.]
Aww come on man! Joe just last week said they show up.