Good morning. Im the executive director of the center for Immigration Studies. A think tank in washington that examines and critiques the impact of immigration on the United States. The issue of Immigration Courts and the backlogs and Immigration Courts has broken somewhat into the general news. It seems like the thing that would be inside baseball for immigration experts but the backlog in Immigration Courts has grown dramatically. Discuss a paper that the center for Immigration Studies published on this issue. The causes for the backlog. The first presenter on the panel today is going to be the author of that paper. A former immigration judge now resident fellow in law and policy at the center for Immigration Studies. He has worked as a senior staff member and a couple of congressional committees, so here us seen the immigration issue from almost all sides. Mr. Arthur is finished we will have comments on his paper, outside for those who dont have it, and more general thoughts about the issue of the Immigration Courts. We have two people who are experts in this issue. Berman. Ll be larry as that suggests, he is an immigration judge and has been for 20 years. Our other commentor is going to be from the heritage foundation. Used to be in the Justice Departments civil rights division. He has worked on election law and a variety of legal issues and has the paper upcoming on the issue was Immigration Courts. Im looking forward to hearing from everybodys comments. We will have a q a after that. Thank you. Before i begin, i want to make one comment. Week, juan passed. He was a good public servant. He died unexpectedly at a rather young age. I did want to note his passing before i began. The Government AccountabilityOffice Issued its report on the management. That revealed a significant decline in the ability of the the completeourts, cases over the last two years. The Immigration Court backlog, cases pending from previous years more than doubled between fy 2006 and fy 2015. The backlog rose from 212,000 median time was 198 days. Cases. 000 pending when the meeting media processing time was 401 days. These backlogs have realworld consequences. Some Immigration Courts were scheduling hearings several years in the future. Calendar mastered hearings, the initial hearing scheduled in may 2021. One court scheduled individual hearings, merit hearings when your case is finally decided five years into the future. Which means you are going to go to court for another five years. The government may have to wait years before they can get a removal order. Basically that person gets to stay in the United States during the time of the backlog. , who may bely interested in bringing relatives to the United States, the alien also has to wait until a final order can be issued. This can be problematic for an individual who may be able to bring relatives to the United States. The backlog has not resulted from an increase in new cases over the past 10 years. New case receipts declined by 2009 to fiscal year 2002000 new cases in fiscal year 2015. We have seen a decrease in new cases. Otherid increase were case receipts. Motions to reopen. They are under orders of removal , matters that are administratively closed. What a case is taken off of a courts docket. These are cases that more or less have been decided or pending lumped back onto the backlog. New case receipts fell. Immigration courts cases annually. The number of Immigration Court cases annually declined by 31 2015, 287,000 cases and fy 2006, even as the number of igs increased. The other issue is many of those cases werecas closed. Ratively no resolution was ever reached. The decisions were 95 of the total and fy 06. Effectively they were pushed to the side. If the number of judges increased and the number of new cases decreased, why is the backlog growing . It is taking longer to issue decisions. The average time between the filing document grew between fy 06 and fy 15. To 286ing from 43 days days. All of this begs the question of why it is taking so much longer to crimp complete immigration cases. Increasehe result of a in continuances. You go to court, you asked for a time to continue. These are the continuances that take place. The number of cases with four or more continuances increased from 9 to 20 . Had forof five cases continuances or more. There are several reasons why Immigration Courts are in this position and why they should get a handle on and decrease the backlog. The first is resources. There are too few people like larry for the number of cases that clog the Immigration Courts. When a judge has a docket that large cases must be sent out for a extended amount of time. The good news is the attorney general has promised and recognize this problem and promised to hire 125 new judges. Attorney general sessions has begun to deliver pre21 judges deliver. Orn in 21 new judges have been sworn in. In the course of just one year between fy 13 and fy 14 the byber of minors increased 70 and the aliens and family units increased by 360 . While many reasons for this increase have in advanced, the most significant was wordofmouth. People called back to the home country and said i came to the United States. They let me into the United States. They released me. Part of it was lies told by smugglers who said if you come to the United States you are going to get permission to remain in this country. Smugglers want to make money. Than byr way to do it promising something to potential clientele. Strainedk court court documents. They decided to prioritize new cases. They pulled judges off of pending cases. Caseswere a bunch of right for decision that had to be pushed back because judges were reassigned. The cases involving children and family members are more complex than cases involving single adult males. Single adult males who have come here to work, they just go home. When you are talking about a minor, the minor will ask for time to have a hearing. You may have to grant multiple continuances to find a lawyer. More complex. The obama administrations action programs for aliens who were brought in a legally as minors led to multiple as aliens requested time to explore such relief and apply for the relief. That slowed up the docket more. These were not the only obama had an effect. At beginning in 2011, ice put in place prosecutorial discretion rules for cases of removal. They told their attorneys to go through their pending cases to find cases that were priorities cases thatld sure were not priorities were not on the docket. It took attorney time that could have been spent completing cases and put it to reviewing cases. Apex inort reached its policies fornson, the apprehension and attention of undocumented immigrants. And limitedt limits cases that would be prioritize for prosecution. Directedg the caseload ice attorneys to join in on motions for cases. Attorneys had to reveal their files. These policies made it clear the administration did not consider the removal of any except the most serious cases to be js in aate, placing i bind. This clog the courts even more as nonmeritorious cases continued. People who would have taken an order of removal hoping their case would be one of the ones that would be taken off of the docket. The new administration is taking a different task. To expand attention. And offers more clarity removes incentives for movable aliens who do not have relief to fight their cases. We have seen the number of they areemoval actually being ordered removed by the court. Two other factors increase the backlog. Activist judges have complicated the process to ascertain whether certain convictions render alien removal theory and the ninth circuit, a series of decisions increased the aliens eligible for relief. These decisions inhibit the make timelyjs to judgments. I fully expect attorney general sessions will litigate cases before the federal courts than his last two predecessors did resulting in more bright line decisions to provide guidance to js to bring back the backlog. Some alien signal to the continuances for counsel. Some attorneys seek multiple continuances for case preparation and riling applications. For ans little downside immigration judge who grants numerous continuances, because shut orders can really be appealed. However, there is tremendous reputational damage that can occur when a motion to continue is denied. In such a case, it is possible that the board of appeals could find that the ij denied due process to an alien by denying a , even in the case where multiple continuances have already been granted. And operating policies and procedures memorandum was issued to conjure toer of continuances curb the number of continuances. I expect attorney general sessions to follow up on and hope to clarify when the judges should and should grant continuances. Backlog is two yards too large. Fear fromittle to i. C. E. In the prior thatistration, i know reducing subordinates will reduce it to more manageable levels. Mark larry . Larry thank you. First the disclaimer so dont get hired. Im speaking for the National Immigration official judges of which i am an elected officer. My opinions will be my own and formed by many discussions with our members in all parts of the country. I am not speaking on behalf of the department of justice, the chief judge, or anybody else in the government. That is important. Naij . He end our focus is rejection of the public. Ofare supported by parties both administrations with the proper and Efficient Administration of justice. Troublehad just as much with republican administrations. S democratic administrations its been my experience that the people at the top really dont understand what we do and consequently, the decisions they make are not helpful. For example, well, let me backtrack a little bit and talk about our organization. Immigration judges are the basic trial judges that hear the cases. Above us is the board of immigration appeals who function as if they were an appellate court. We, since 1996, have been clearly designated as judges by congress. We are in the statute. We have prescribed jurisdiction and powers and Congress Even gave us contempt authority to be able to enforce our decisions. Unfortunately, no administration has seen fit to actually give us the contempt authority. Theyve never done the regulations, but its in the statute. The board of immigration appeals is not in the statute. It has no legal existence, really. Its essentially an emanation of the attorney generals discretion over Immigration Law. The members of the board of immigration appeals are in some cases theyve got some experience, generally they dont have very much. Theyre a combination of people in the other parts of department of justice and deserve a wellpaid position. Very often, they are staff attorneys who have basically moved up to become Board Members skipping the immigration judge process. Very few Immigration Judges have ever been made Board Members and none of them were made Board Members because they had been Immigration Judges. If they were, it was largely a one sentence. The administration of the executive office for immigration review, in which we are housed, is basically an Administrative Agency. We are judges, but we dont have a court. We operate in an Administrative Agency thats a lot closer to the department of Motor Vehicles than it is to a District Court or even a bankruptcy court, article one type court. Our supervisors, im not sure why judges need supervisors, but our supervisors are called chief assistant chief Immigration Judges. Some of them have some experience. Some have no experience not only as judges, but really, as attorneys. They were staff attorneys working in the bowels of eor and gradually became temporary Board Members and then permanently Board Members. Interestingly when a court of , Appeals Panel is short a judge, they bring up a district judge. Eor used to do that bringing up immigration judge to fill the panel in the board. They dont do that anymore. They appoint the Staff Members as temporary members, which is shocking when we tell judge to that, and when the panel was short and put the law clerk on the panel. But that is what goes on. The top three judges until recently, the chief judge and the two primary deputies had no courtroom experience that im aware of. The two of them have gone on, unfortunately one has gone on to , be a bia member and the other retired. Our direct supervisors are the chief Immigration Judges, some are in headquarters and they generally have very little experience. Others are in the field and they do have some experience, although, for example, the last two acijs, assistant chief Immigration Judges who were , appointed became judges in so they dont have vast 2016. Experience, although they may be fine people with other forms experience, but this agency is not run by experienced judges and i think its important to understand that. Theres a severe misallocation of resources within eor. I think congress has probably given us plenty of money, but we misuse it. In the past administration, the number of Senior Executive service, ses officials has doubled. Maybe they needed some more administrative depth, although i doubt it. The assistant chief Immigration Judges are proliferating. I think theres 22 of them now. These are people who may do some cases, some do no cases, they generally dont really move the ball when it comes to adjudicating cases. Somehow the federal courts are able to function without the intermediaries and supervisory judges and they think we function better without them as well. To give you a few examples, i could give you a thousand examples, if you want to stick around, ill be happy to talk about it. Art was talking about the juvenile search. I think it was approximately 50,000 juveniles came across the border. To appear to be tough, i guess, they were prioritized. The official line is we are going to give them their asylum hearings immediately. Im not sure what kind of an asylum case a sixyearold would hear the caseould and do it quickly. And discourage people from coming to our country, but in fact what actually happened is the juvenile docket is basically a meet and greet. First ofre not all, im not allowed to be a juvenile judge. The juvenile judges are carefully selected for people who get along well with children, i guess. Really, what they do, is they just, they see the kids periodically and in the meantime, the children are following their asylum cases with the Asylum Office where theyre applying for special immigrant juvenile status, various things. But judge time is being wasted on that. Another example is the current surge. I have a really busy docket. We talk about cases being scheduled in 2021. Know 2021 the backlog for me is infinite. I cannot give you a merits hearing on my docket unless i take another case off. My docket is full through 2020, and i was instructed by my chief immigration judge not to set any cases past 2020. So, theyre just piling up in the ether somewhere. As busy as i am, they send me to the border, but these border details are politically oriented. First of all, we probably could be doing them by televideo, but assuming they want to do them in person, you would think they would send only the number of judges that are really needed, but in fact on my last detail of ten business days, two week detail, two days i had no cases scheduled at all. And back home, having two cases off the docket , two days off the docket which almost never happens would be useful because i could work on motions and decisions, but when im in gina, louisiana, i cant really work on my regular stuff. So, im just reading email and hanging out there. The reason for that is because theres been no attempt to comply with the attorney generals request that we rush judges to the border with at the same time making sure theres enough work or not to send more judges than is necessary to do the work. I assume that people that run our agency just want to make the attorney general happy and they send as many judges to the border as possible. One particularly bizarre example was in san antonio. The san antonio judges were doing a detail to one of the outlying detention facilities by televideo. But they want today rush judges to the border so they signed a , bunch of judges that had their own docket to take over that docket on one weeks notice. That meant that the judges in san antonio couldnt reset the cases. Youve got to give at least ten days notice of a hearing by regulation. So, we had judges taken away from their regular dockets to do that. Judges who normally who would have done that, who were already on the border san antonio is pretty close to the border didnt have anything to do. This may be extreme cases and it happens too much because of political interference and its nothing to do with party. Weve had the same with democratic and republican administrations. It comes from political decisions animating the process and they dont understand what theyre managing, just an attempt to placate the guy on the top. So, thats basically whats been happening. Am i over my ten minutes here . Yeah, but youre right at it. Youve got a couple more minutes, thats f