Review faults U.S. initiative on immigration courts reform

The review comes after the Justice Department’s inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility reported in July that they found widespread problems with the hiring of immigration judges from 2004 to 2006.

Investigators said former department officials improperly took political and ideological considerations into account while screening applications for the career civil service positions.

The staff members used Internet searches to determine whether candidates had made political campaign contributions and to seek out their voting patterns and affiliations, the report said. The searches “contributed to significant delays in appointing immigration judges” at a time when the courts were burdened by a rising workload, investigators said.

As many as 40 judges won jobs through the improper process, but efforts by Democratic lawmakers and interest groups to dislodge them are unlikely. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey told an American Bar Association audience last month, after the inspector general’s report emerged, that unseating the judges would be “unfair — and quite possibly illegal given their civil service protections.” A candidate mentioned in the report, Garry D. Malphrus, was promoted this year to serve as a judge on the Board of Immigration Appeals.

“The illegal hiring process casts a stain on the entire deportation process and calls into question whether immigration courts can perform the job of handling thousands of deportation cases annually in accordance with individualized due process, fairness and judicial neutrality,” ACLU legislative counsel Joanne Lin said in a statement.

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