KAREN MUSALO, ANNA O. LAW, ANNIE DAHER, KATHARINE M. DONATO, CHELSEA MEINERS, 2004
“Immigration judges (IJs), housed inside the Govt Workplace for Immigration Assessment inside the Division of Justice (DOJ), make selections in asylum and withholding claims, that are life or loss of life issues. And though their title is “decide,” IJs are DOJ attorneys who lack independence and are notably inclined to political pressures. Federal court docket judges and students alike have criticized the standard and equity of IJ decision-making, and lots of research have been carried out to higher perceive the elements that impression it. The prior research have relied principally on quantitative information as a result of IJ selections will not be publicly out there or searchable in any current database. The authors of this examine had unprecedented entry to greater than 5 hundred IJ selections, permitting for each a quantitative and qualitative evaluation. Our findings had been in keeping with different research in noting that IJ expertise and gender made a distinction in case outcomes, with male IJs and IJs with enforcement backgrounds denying safety at increased charges. We had been capable of establish different important developments as effectively, together with that the commonest explanation why IJs denied safety to credible asylum seekers had been their findings that they failed to fulfill the extraordinarily stringent necessities of two components of the refugee definition—components which arguably are overly restrictive and inconsistent with worldwide norms. We additionally noticed patterns of incompetence and bias amongst these selections. This Article recommends a number of coverage reforms to handle the shortcomings we establish, amongst them: (1) the creation of Article I immigration courts, (2) enchancment of IJ competence by extra stringent hiring requirements and persevering with training, (3) elevated range of IJs based mostly on employment expertise, (4) lowered deference to the Board of Immigration Appeals in reviewing instances, and (5) allocating further sources to immigration adjudication.”
Karen Musalo is Professor of Regulation, Financial institution of America Basis Chair in Worldwide Regulation, and Director of the Heart for Gender and Refugee Research on the College of California Faculty of the Regulation, San Francisco (beforehand College of California, Hastings Faculty of the Regulation). Anna O. Regulation is Affiliate Professor of Political Science and the Herbert Kurz Chair of Constitutional Rights at CUNY Brooklyn Faculty. *** Annie Daher is an asylum and immigration legislation legal professional and previously Senior Employees Lawyer on the Heart for Gender and Refugee Research. Katharine M. Donato is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor of Worldwide Migration within the Faculty of International Service at Georgetown College. Chelsea Meiners holds a Grasp of Arts in Latin American Research from Georgetown College and presently works in worldwide improvement.
