Sessions to immigration judges: immigrants' lawyers like "water seepage" around the law



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The remarks made during the training of the largest class of new immigration judges implied that judges were part of the same team as the Trump administration and that immigrants and their lawyers were trying to undermine their efforts.

"Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day like water that penetrates through a dam of land to bypass the clear words of the immigration law to promote the interests of their clients "courts. "And we understand that – their duty, however, is not to preserve the integrity of the act – it's our duty."

Sessions noted that "of course" the system "must always respect the rights of aliens" in court. But he also warned the judges of "false statements".

"Just as we defend the rights of immigrants, we reject unwarranted and sometimes false claims," ​​Sessions said. "The law is never served when deception is rewarded, so that the fundamentals of the law are defeated."

The comments came in the context of repeated Sessions initiatives aimed at exercising its unique authority over immigration courts, a separate legal system for immigrants that is fully managed by the Department of Justice.

Sessions approves each hired judge and can instruct them on how to interpret the right, and therefore decide cases, as well as how to handle the cases. He has used this authority on several occasions over the past year, including a radical decision that will significantly reduce the types of cases that qualify for asylum protection in the United States. These decisions overturned the years of decisions of immigration judges and the Immigration Appeals Board.

The sessions reminded the new judges of this authority and these decisions in his remarks, saying that they were "correct" and "cautious" interpretations of the law that "restored" them to the original intent.

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In the immigration court system, judges are employed by the Department of Justice and prosecutors acting as prosecutors work for the Department of Homeland Security. Immigrants are allowed to have a lawyer if they find one, but none are provided.

Sessions stated that it was a joint duty for the courts to follow his interpretation of the law. He noted an increase in asylum claims from immigrants crossing the southern border, creating a backlog of years in immigration courts where resources are limited.

3 graphics explaining Trump's border dilemma

"The asylum system has been abused for years, as we all know, to the detriment of the rule of law, sound public policy, public safety and the detriment of legitimate people. "said Mr. Sessions. "The asylum has never been designed to escape from all the serious problems that people face every day in the world, because Americans are facing serious problems every day."

The sessions added that when "we deviate from the law and create nebulous norms", this makes "violence to the rule of law".

The Trump administration argues that the backlog is due to false allegations about the system, although it has not been shown that intentionally fraudulent cases represent more than a tiny fraction of the total.

According to justice statistics, about 22% of asylum applications, for example, were granted this year until June. But these are not all denials – about 42% were refused in the same amount of time and others just closed. And research has shown that immigrants with access to lawyers to guide them into the complex system were far more likely to win their asylum claim.
Impact of sessions & # 39; the asylum movement was already feeling at the border

The sessions also referred to the "zero tolerance" policy implemented this spring, which separated thousands of families at the border. The Ministry of Justice is pursuing the cases submitted to it, a policy still in force. The sessions indicated that 90% of the cases referred to the courts are prosecuted. But he did not recognize family separations or the fact that the Department of Homeland Security stopped sending cases of parents illegally taken with their children to no longer separate families.

"I think this has a deterrent effect, we have a track record to show us that's the case," Sessions said.

There has been no marked decline in the number of families crossing the border since the policy came into effect, and crossings in general have largely fluctuated with seasonal patterns.

The sessions were for 44 judges in training and upon arrival. This is the largest category of immigration judges and this means that the system now has the most active immigration judges in history. He added that it was planned to add some by the end of the year, which would bring them closer to their goal of a 50% increase in the number of immigration judges since the beginning of the year. administration.

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