A lawless administration and president. People see where we at and what we are doing. Joined for a preview of next weeks robert mueller. Kyle, remind us of how we got to this point. Kyle democrats have been trying to get special counsel bob mueller in front of them to talk about his report for months. There was a lot of closeddoor agotiations to finally secure painstakingly thought over, limited hearing with him in public. They think that hearing directly from mueller will help the American People understand the nuances in his report in ways they havent at this point. They said that they could also have other effects, also on democrats, wanting to put forward impeachment efforts. How so . How will they affect these . When realtors report came out, he talked about a progression of 80 something impeachmentlled for against the president. Its not nearly enough to get over the finish line or even justify it. A lot of the components proponents of impeachment say , moreg from mueller people will see the movie then the book to understand what he found in terms of the president s campaign and his efforts to obstruct the investigation. We were supposed to have these hearings last week. What was the reason for the delay . Kyle this is an inside the capital problem. You have two committees that will sit down with mueller and the Judiciary Committee, each of them had been planned to do it for four hours. The Judiciary Committee was upset because they had for members. They decided to delay a week standard extended to three hours. 60 lawmakers asking questions in that time. The extended time, it is conceivable. If they are rigid about time restrictions, and there are a lot of reasons why, if mueller goes on long, he is not known for his verbosity. You could see a problem of running against the clock. You mentioned the carefulness with which lawmakers have been trying to approach this and limit it. Goes, are there any plans for lawmakers to be hearing from either mueller or his deputies . Kyle there was an initial plan to hear from mueller deputies while he was speaking in public. Those plans have been shelved. The Justice Department made clear they didnt want mueller deputies appearing before congress. That may be subject to further fighting between congress and the executive branch later. Gets the public portion and they will see what they get out of him. We have been learning about the approach that democrats and republicans are planning to take. Can you lay that out . Kyle on the Judiciary Committee in particular, the democrats want mueller to talk about his thought process behind the obstruction of justice evidence he compiled. The whole ballgame is for mueller to capture whether he would have charged President Trump with obstruction or there is not a technical prohibition within the Justice Department. If they say anything that approximates that, that means they wanted out of this hearing. The republicans will underscore their longterm complaints that muellers team is biased and they had an agenda. They will zoom in on that. They want to hammer on all of those things. Congress as closely as they do, what are you curious to see as they approach next week . Kyle bob mueller has not testified in front of congress in six years. When he did, he was the fbi director and had a friendly audience. Witheringdles that pressure he is under, and whether he wants to tell people stuff that was not necessarily way, if in a digestible he is motivated, we may learn more than we think we will. Kyle cheney. Reporting at politico. Thanks for the insight. On newsmakers, representative from washington democrat shares Democratic Coalition and the committee on the modernization of Congress Talks about his legislative priorities. Newsmakers today at 6 00 on cspan. You can watch online or listen on our free radio app. Watch cspan on monday for immoral services honoring the Late Supreme CourtJustice John Paul stevens. casket Justice Stevens arrived at the Supreme Court where a private sarah ceremony will take place. The lie and repose and paying of respects. Watch live coverage monday on cspan. Org, or listen with the cspan radio app. Joining us from los angeles this morning is the president of the National Association of immigration judges. Lets begin with what your association is. How many members . We are the official union and. Rganization we speak on behalf of the judges for immigration. We speak with the public and our representatives on the hill. How did you become an immigration judge . Law school. Ed from i have been with the Justice Department my entire career. I wasto my appointment, an assistant u. S. Attorney in los angeles. Clerk in as a law 1990. 1996. Who oversees immigration in this country . Its a great question. Most people dont understand this problem of having an immigration corner court in a law Law Enforcement agency. They are rare. We are seeing them in the Justice Department department accountable. On a daily basis, describe what the job is. What are you doing as an immigration judge . Right now, we have over 900,000 pending cases for 400 judges. Our judges here a wide variety of cases. Same, in courthe morning and afternoon, hearing cases, often times in large volume because they need to go through some poor luminary steps. Depending on where the person is, sometimes they are at detention facilities, they could be listening to bond requests as well as regular cases. Other judges are handling cases, and they can have upwards of four or 5000 cases pending on their docket. Scheduled three or four years in advance. Told theyometimes be have to schedule cases of 50 people or 70 people for a four hour session. You could be going through how many cases in one day . May be 50 or 60 cases per day. Ive had some colleagues that had to go through 80, 90 or 100 cases in a day. This is deeper luminary faces. Migrantsthe different that show up in Immigration Court. Jurisdiction of the court covers anyone the government believes is in the United States without permission or has done something that requires them to be removed or seeking to enter without permission. States be in the united for years having entered with a visa. You can of individuals who have been here without status. You can have individuals who are apprehended at the border. We have unaccompanied children on the docket. We have children who have competency issues. We have people who dont know what is happening in court. It is a range of types of individuals and cases we hear. Someone who has been here from one day or someone who has been here for 50 years. Someone seeking asylum to someone engaged in serious criminal activity. Who is arguing for each side . Cases,lar to criminal each one is initiated by a charging document filed by the department of Homeland Security. Where theument is government establishes their case. They lay out their facts and charts. When the two parties come before us, one of the parties is always an attorney from the department of Homeland Security, particularly immigration and customs enforcement. What about for those seeking cetera. R a visa, et one of the Common Misconceptions is that while the government, in the they are not considered criminal. Those at the court are entitled to court lawyers. Individuals do have a right to be represented by in attorney. Throughen have to go various discussions about the rights and responsibilities in which we explain the individuals can get counsel, but it has to be their own responsibility and on their own dime. It cannot be an expense of the government. How do they give representation . How often do you see a migrant in your Court Without representation . Its not unusual to have represented individuals represent themselves. It really depends on the type of case. Who are in detention facilities have a much less chance of securing counsel. I dont have the specific numbers. A much higher percentage of 50 ofuals, as high as the individuals will not be able to retain counsel. In the context of the nondetained cases, where individuals have been in the community or have never been taken into custody. The likelihood of getting counsel is much higher. In california or new york, the coastal cities or states, where there is greater access to nonprofit organizations or pro bono organizations, we have a much higher level of representation. Have a hardery time securing representation in rural areas. Its all a matter of being able to financially afford in attorney. Many people cannot. Of this does it cost to process somebody how much does it . Cost to process somebody . How much does it cost to process somebody . I dont have the numbers, but it could be in the tens of thousands depending on the complexity of the case. We want to get our viewers involved. In a few minutes, the house will come in for a pro forma session. It will be short. They will be coming in and we will go to the floor for that brief session. Return. Will for folks that want to call in, dial in now. People the wait time for coming to Immigration Court . How long can this process take . It depends. For the individuals in our in new york docket, or los angeles or san francisco, it is not unusual to have 4000 or 5000 cases, which means the case that may come before them today and will be ready for trial will not be scheduled until sometime in 2022 or three 2023. Effort to makef sure that individual is given much quicker access. Who handle the detained dockets have a smaller docket. They may have a few hundred cases. They make an effort to ensure the individuals are provided the opportunity to get their case within a short period of time. Rather within a couple of months worth more than that. Depends on how the docket is and how we people are being detained. For those people who may not have a trial for two hiking for 424here do they go years for 24 years, where do they go . Until recently, all of the nondetained dockets met the person was in the u. S. In awaiting trial. Recently, the government started the Migrant Protection Program that requires the individual to remain in mexico while they are going through their case. Individual says the would be best over the border for their hearing then returned to mexico where they would wait for their next one, often several months away. When someone is awaiting their trial, they have typically been allowed to stay in the u. S. However, the new policy on asylumseekers, what is happening . In those instances where individuals are part of the , thent Protection Program individuals are given a document to come to the border for their hearing. Bussed into the court and presented with a court and judge. The cases rescheduled for an opportunity to secure counsel or prepare an application or get the witnesses or whatever. The individual is given a reset notice and Homeland Security takes the individual back and takes them to the border and releases the individual to outside the United States. They are excited to remain in mexico until the next hearing that same triggers procedure of coming back to the border. The airport into the court for their hearing. Hank in jonesboro, georgia. Know whetherke to , to thehe u. N. Laws judges use those laws to abide by . Our obligations are to the obligations to secure protections for individuals seeking persecution. It is codified through the immigration and nationality act. Honoring the International Obligations through domestic law. Those are called our asylum laws. We do have to honor those and follow the law when allowing individuals to pursue applications for asylum or withholding of removal and protection against torture. Billy in brooklyn. Democrat. Want toop and trump build a border wall to keep the socalled illegals out. They want people to come in legally. They have a problem with legal immigration, too. Tom cotton and immigration hardliners, when they tried to propose copperheads of immigration reform, the proposed reducing the number of legal green cards by half. As judges, we dont comment. Its not appropriate for judges to comment on substantive law or those policy considerations. Is the can explain impact of those positions on the court or the impact of what we are dealing with currently. At this point, i cant answer that. Why is there the backlog you were describing . You alluded to it initially when you asked about Immigration Court and where it is situated. If you look at Immigration Court, it was formed out of the former immigration internationalization service in the department of justice. We have remained within the doj throughout our time. Presentedented significant problems for the court and has been a primary contributor to the backlog. We are a court that is run by a prosecutor. Every administration has used the court in various ways in terms of advancement of the prosecutorial or executive branch policies. We started out by being ignored. We were considered a traditional Law Enforcement, we didnt get enough funding. There was one factor to having a backlog. Up people andng identifying people but we dont have enough resources to be able to process them. Over time, what became even more difficult was the court was used as the messaging tool. With the previous administration, they were constantly take started the constant shuffling of our dockets. Individuals who are recently apprehended, such as children or adults with children were in front of the line in spite of the hundreds of thousands of cases waiting in line to go through the process. Have had a we continued reshuffling of the dockets. We started out with 2017, sending a third of our judges to the border in a show of force to say we are here to process cases. Border,t just go to the often not having enough cases to hear. We have been told we had to deal with these family unity cases. The that his previous demonstrations adoptive children cases we did process with a deadline. That is being put in front of judges to deal as a priority case. And yet we are told Everything Else is a priority case. Combine that with the lack of resources we have had. Court, weh we are a are not treated as a court when the agency administers the court. We have judges that do not have sufficient clerks. We dont have enough clerks to handle the thousands of cases our judges are being asked to hear. We dont have enough office space. We dont have enough courtroom space. We dont have enough law clerks. The agency has taken a drastic step and reduced our access to interpreters. 85 of the individuals that appear before the court do not speak english as their primary language. The courtmbent upon to make sure we provide interpreters. Because of the problems with the where the court has been administered, the agency is out of money. They are an permitting policy furtheringhat are the backlog because of introducing delays into the system and limiting access to interpreters. To make matters worse, the andcy has introduced quotas deadlines on judges. What needs tooyed be a judge, because now it is introducing a personal financial stake for the judge to hold his or her job into the decisions the judge has to make. A lot of the time, judges are spending time to keep track of excel spreadsheets, to figure out what they are doing on every case and it is compromising their ability to focus on the case. Seeing a much greater emphasis on enforcement as well. In the previous initiation, or another times, we would have some level of metering of cases prosecutorialof discretion. We are not seeing that. These all contribute to a backlog that is evergrowing. These are increased resources we have been given. We grew by 100 judges. 168 have been hired in the last two fiscal years. That, we have gone from 600,000 to 900,000. That is from that fundamental flaw of having a court system that is within a Law Enforcement agency. We believe it is important that before we do anything else, it is to remove the Immigration Court from the department of justice. We need to secure the independence a court needs. Similar to what we have done with the tax and Bankruptcy Court and giving it the independence so it can run like a court and function like a court and bring the efficiency and appropriate protections for the party. To kathy in oklahoma, republican. Two quick questions. Why would you have to have a hearing or a trial for someone who is caught dead to rights crossing the border. They are not claiming their innocent. If you call someone in your yard, they would be sent away. They wouldnt get to stay on your land until they had a hearing. Do they stay and why are there hearings when there is no disputing they are there illegally . Question, the children that come here, i feel safari for them so sorry for them. They cannot make the decision legally to leave their home country. A guardian or parent was taking care of them. Agreementre not some worked out with these countries that they will send them back to determine who the. Or guardian was . Children should not be locked up. They have to do something with them. Regarding the first question in terms of procedures that are afforded to individuals seeking the beingrom removed from the u. S. , under law, congress has provided for these removal proceedings. The questions of whether someone in the United States is a United States citizen or national, that is something that should be determined by an independent arbiter. Is whether theon person is in the United States or sneaking into the United States illegally. It is one of those issues that congress has determined. It needs to be decided by a judge. Obviously, a que