US Immigration Judges Instructed to Limit Continuances and Expedite Deportations

At a mandatory training, US judges were told to reduce time given to people awaiting visas or green cards before being deported.

A Guardian report claimed that immigration judges across the US have been asked to be strict and deny people time as they wait for their Green Cards so that they can be deported. A mandatory training for judges also urged them to threaten attorneys who accept too many immigration cases. “There is no room to be kind; there is only urgency to make them leave [the US], one way or the other," the judges were told. Citing sources, the Guardian report claimed that hundreds of immigration judges attended a mandatory presentation in recent days about “continuances” – a legal tool which has historically been used to give immigrants more time to find lawyers, build their cases or wait for approval of their applications for documents at another federal immigration agency.

The virtual training session was led by a veteran immigration judge, Keith Hunsucker, of the Board of immigration appeals, the immigration courts’ appellate branch. He denied over 80% of asylum cases for much of the time that he was on the bench in immigration court before moving on to other roles, the report said. The training was apparently meant to reduce the immigration court backlog and they were taught that some continuances are sought solely for the purpose of delay and persons illegally present in the United States who wish to remain have a substantial incentive to prolong litigation so they may avoid deportation as long as possible. Continuance requests solely for dilatory purposes should not be countenanced by Immigration Judges,” one slide read An approved visa petition should not delay deportation proceedings if the visa itself is not yet available because of annual quotas but would be issued to the qualified recipient at a later, albeit unspecified, date, the training suggested.

Though there is a huge backlog, the judges were told during the training that immigration attorneys risk punitive measures for accepting what are deemed too many cases. “Where a practitioner takes on more cases than he or she can responsibly and professionally handle,” one of the slides read, “it may be appropriate for an Immigration Judge to consider referral to EOIR disciplinary counsel for further action and possible sanction for a violation. ”