Hiring military lawyers as immigration judges alarm of law experts

The Trump administration has begun to recruit hundreds of military lawyers to sit as immigration judges, presiding over what are often federal decisions of life and death for immigrants in the United States, since experts warn that the White House strategy is of high risk and possibly illegal.

The judges are temporary, but renewable, and the objective of the government is to meet an acute need for more immigration judges in the midst of Donald Trump’s mass deportation mission, which is now happening even when experienced immigration judges seem to be considered a lack of the agenda of the president of the courts.

The officers and reservists of the Armed Forces of Active Service, part of the Army Justice arm known as the body of the Judge General Lawyer (JAG), which has given rise to the lawyers that there are “nickname ‘JAGS’, are receiving messages asking them to be volunteers for the high -risk immigration roles.

But experts warn that military lawyers do not have specialized knowledge to perform the duties of an immigration judge and that they may only have obtained one or two hours of training in the immigration law, if that, during the JAG school, while, in addition, their appointments would probably break the law.

“The army mission is to kill people and break things, and the JAGs are trained to support that mission within the limits of military law. That is not the same as the immigration law. Why would we be using those lawyers, of all lawyers, to decide the fate of families looking for refuge?” Shawn Vandiver said, Marine veteran and immigration defender. “It is just another way that the Trump administration is trying to sow fear and prevent people from coming here.”

According to the White House and the Pentagon, military lawyers could double the ranks of immigration judges and address the overwhelming accumulation of cases of 3.75 million. But its use for the application of civil immigration would seem to violate the laws of Congress, namely the POSSE Commitatus Law and the regulations of the Executive Branch, experts say.

In fact, in a memorandum resurfaced from the Reagan era, even Samuel Alito, now one of the most conservative judges in the United States Supreme Court, acknowledged that “if the military lawyers that work under the usual military chain were assigned part -time to perform functions of the civil law along with their regularly assigned military duties”, it would be assigned to the “serious questions” legally.

He strongly advised that such lawyers made a personal appearance in court.

Similarly, the Democrats in the Senate Armed Services Committee have said that they are “extremely disturbed” on the scheme and their impact on the ability of the JAGs to do their real work, if they are being diverted to the immigration courts.

“I do not understand what your final game is,” said Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer and Lieutenant Colm retired in the Military Police, reserve of the US Army. UU. “Unless they are just trying to send a message that they are militarizing justice in the United States, and somehow that will scare people.”

The Guardian looked for comments from the Pentagon, but was sent to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which did not respond to a similar request.

The early military tasks are produced after the DOJ executive office for immigration review (EOIR), which houses immigration courts, relaxed rules last month so that any lawyer can now serve as a temporary immigration judge. The authorities say that they no longer believe that those named to those “with a threshold level of experience in the immigration law serves the interests of Eoir.”

Vandiver is alarmed.

“You used to have to demonstrate that you had the skills to be a temporary immigration judge. Now they have removed all those requirements, and it is literally any lawyer Donald Trump decides:” Eh, maybe that guy can decide someone’s fate forever, “Vandiver said.

The members of the service assumed by temporary immigration judges are expected to receive some training in the Immigration Law, but not enough to responsibly fulfill the roles, experts said.

Immigrants and asylum seekers appear before the Immigration Courts for many reasons, even to present their protection case, reach the legal permanent residence or a press break in their procedures while pursuing another relief of immigration. But in general, people are facing a judge because they are fighting their removal to their country of origin, or a third country that will take them.

The amazing accumulation of cases waiting for award has been fired since the first Trump administration, amid the generalized repression of foreign government, natural disasters, failed economies and other factors in other countries around the world that have forced people to flee through international borders in search of security and opportunities.

The Biden administration regularly declared the immigration system of the United States “broken” and, from the beginning, tried to relieve pressure on the judicial system, but were largely abandoned later in their mandate. Even so, defenders and some Democrats have frequently lamented the breach of the United States Congress to approve legislation that allows immigrants in the long term and respectful of the law to more quickly legalize their immigration state instead of languishing in the brief-backbreag as their cases become obsolete.

Meanwhile, immigration judges who had already been trained and who were actively presided over the docks have been forced to the bank in recent months, many apparently because their judicial philosophies did not align with the priorities of the administration.

In New York, where two judges recently finished, one of them had the highest rate in the city to grant asylum, while the other had been an open critic of the immigration and customs application (ICE). Seven judges have said goodbye in San Francisco, including the main immigration judge and all three with the highest asylum subsidy rates there. A similar expelled throughout the country has been developed, even in Chicago and the Boston area, which suggests an approach to gutting courts in democratic states and sanctuary cities.

More than one hundred immigration judges have left or were dismissed since Trump returned to the White House.

“Even Friday (September 5), they were shooting qualified immigration judges who were sitting in the bank, and now they claim that they need these Jags to enter and take their place, which makes no sense,” said Stock. “The only thing I can think about is that somehow they think that the JAGs will simply order that everyone deported immediately. You know, they will not pay attention to the law. And that is why they are trying to bring them in some kind of measure to try to accelerate deportations.”

After the news explodes that up to 600 military lawyers would be appointed as temporary immigration judges for 179 -day assignments, renewable assignments, Corey Lewandowski, a Trump affiliate for a long time and current main advisor to Kristi Noem, the National Security Secretary, wrote on social networks: “I see more illegal immigrants in the near future.”

As the commander in chief, Trump has a huge influence with the military, and the observers believe that JAGS makes decisions contrary to the mass deportation campaign of the administration could risk damaging their careers, as temporary immigration judges and beyond. But Vandiver has heard from the members of the service that on the issue of immigration courts and other recent uses of the military for the application of immigration “do not want to do this and know that it is wrong.”

“They know that our US values ​​are not agreed. They know that these missions are just the result of the dreams of fever of an American dictator,” he said.

For those and other reasons, JAG CORP members who lend their oaths seriously may not be easily coerced in rubber print deportations, even when they put themselves in an impossible situation, experts said.

“People could be sent back to their countries of origin and face torture, persecution, death, imprisonment,” said Jeff Joseph, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “I would feel very uncomfortable, with two weeks of training, enter and make these types of decisions.”

Service members will not necessarily make a dent in the general accumulation of immigration cases, given the probability that mass appeals challenge their possible errors, jurisdiction and authority.

“All these cases will be appealed by legal error and other issues if the judges are not trained,” Joseph said. “So you are just changing one portfolio of orders to another.”

In the end, he said, the question is: “Are we really militarizing the immigration court?”