Immigration Judges in this systems are employees of the Executive Branch and are subordinate to the policy and other direction of the President and from the President to the Attorney General. Immigration Judges are not supposed to make policy, but implement policy. Their feelings and opinions are subordinate to the President and official policy.
However, there are myriad Immigration Judges who are at war, who are resisting as part of an organized, but illegal, political movement among insubordinate employees of the Executive Branch. Fortunately, Immigration Judges are "at will" employees of the Executive Branch and are Presidential appointees, so consequently they do not have civil service protections. Immigration judges may be removed for cause, or no cause, at the will of the Attorney General or the President.
The Resistance by these bureaucrats is well documented and it is time for the Attorney General to move against these recalcitrant employees, and replace them with employees willing to implement the President's immigration enforcement priorities and policies.
Among the Immigration Judges sabotaging immigration enforcement is Dana Leigh Marks, an Immigration Judge who doesn't like ensuring that immigration laws are enforced. Marks thinks she should make immigration policy and to be made a real judge rather than an executive branch employee subordinate to the President and the President's policies. Marks is leading her own little amnesty for illegal aliens, in violation of the law and current policy.
But even if an attorney helps him, there’s no guarantee that he’ll be granted asylum. Approval rates vary dramatically across the immigration court system’s 200 judges, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University, which monitors the courts.
For example, Judge Murry denied 97.7 percent of asylum applications he heard over the past five years, making him one of the toughest in the nation. By contrast, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, also of San Francisco, approved 83 percent of applications. (Data isn’t available for Burch and the other recently appointed judges named in this story.)
[Inside Immigration Court: Are Deportation Hearings In The Bay Area Unconstitutional?, By Darwin BondGraham, East Bay Express, March 7, 2017]
Just as Marks is running her own little immigration amnesty program, so is another Immigration Judge in the San Francisco office of the EOIR, Valerie A. Burch. Not surprisingly, Burch is a former ACLU lawyer who attacked immigration enforcement at the most basic level.
HARRISBURG – The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed legal briefs yesterday in a Pennsylvania appeals court on behalf of six South American immigrants and Philadelphia residents who seek to keep their driver's licenses. In 2009 the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) attempted to revoke the licenses because the individuals used tax identification numbers instead of Social Security numbers in their applications. Pennsylvania law does not require non-citizens to have a Social Security number to obtain a license.
"These people followed Pennsylvania law and should be allowed to keep their licenses," said Valerie Burch, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Pennsylvania. "By cancelling their licenses, PennDOT forces people to the fringes of society, interferes with their ability to work, and makes everyday tasks insurmountable."
[ACLU-PA Defends Immigrants' Right To Drive, News Release, ACLU, October 13, 2010]That was in 2010, but since then as an Immigration Judge appointed by the execrable Loretta Lynch, she has decided that despite a previous deportation, she has the authority to review the case of Maguiber Ramos, a previously deported illegal alien. The law prohibits illegal aliens with previous deportations from receiving a hearing before the EOIR according to an Act of Congress, the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, Title 8 United States Code, Section 241(a)(5) Detention And Removal Of Aliens:
(5) Reinstatement of removal orders against aliens illegally reentering.-If the Attorney General finds that an alien has reentered the United States illegally after having been removed or having departed voluntarily, under an order of removal, the prior order of removal is reinstated from its original date and is not subject to being reopened or reviewed, the alien is not eligible and may not apply for any relief under this Act, and the alien shall be removed under the prior order at any time after the reentry.Furthermore, such illegal aliens are ineligible for employment in the United States.
(7) Employment authorization.-No alien ordered removed shall be eligible to receive authorization to be employed in the United States unless the Attorney General makes a specific finding that- (A) the alien cannot be removed due to the refusal of all countries designated by the alien or under this section to receive the alien, or (B) the removal of the alien is otherwise impracticable or contrary to the public interest.But Burch is a law unto herself, not only refusing to deny Ramos a hearing for which he was ineligible, but also apparently released him despite his admission that he will resume illegal employment.
The question before the judge: Should Ramos be allowed to live at home and support his family while awaiting a deportation hearing, or was he too dangerous to be freed? If he was safe to release, what amount of money — or bond — would be sufficient to ensure his return to court?
[Some Good News For A Family Whose Jailed Father Is Facing Deportation To Guatemala, by Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2017]Instead, she released him, only to never show up again.
She granted his request for release on bond, which she set at $3,500 — high enough to make sure he shows up at his next hearing, but low enough that he could come up with the money.And Burch was playing little games for the press as well, making a mockery of the courtroom:
An hour into the three-hour hearing, the judge picked up her remote control.
“You have a lot of supporters here,” she said as she used the remote to swivel a camera so Ramos could see his children, who were sitting with their mother, Yibi Heras, in the front row. Behind them, he saw dozens of supporters who had crowded into the small courtroom.Immigration Judges serve at the pleasure of the Attorney General. Jeff Sessions should immediately fire both Burch and Marks. Neither is doing their job, which is to review cases solely for legal completeness, not conduct their own immigration policies by approving almost every asylum application or releasing illegal aliens who should be summarily removed based on a previous deportation order.
Furthermore, the AG should declare Immigration Judges to be employees ineligible for representation by unions based on their law enforcement and national security work, just as ICE Homeland Security Investigations agents are.
