Shovel Ready Judges: The Obama Plan to Address Immigration Backlog

On Tuesday, President Obama requested $3.7 billion in “emergency” funds from Congress to address the urgent immigration crisis along the southwestern border.

The proposal includes a request of $45.4 million “to hire approximately 40 additional immigration judges and support teams, including those anticipated to be hired on a temporary basis.”

Although the funding request has several proposals that may appear prudent in theory, perhaps even “shovel-ready,” the hiring of additional judges will not be effective in the timely resolution of the catastrophe at the border.

According to the Department of Justice, the more than 260 immigration judges in 59 immigration courts nationwide already have a backlog backlog of 366,758 cases.

Moreover, it will take months to find and train judges qualified to handle immigration cases to the standards outlined by the Department of Justice. If they were hired today, it would be next year before they were ready to hear cases.

Also, immigration judges are not Article III judges—who sit in a co-equal branch of the federal government. Rather, immigration judges work for the executive branch.

President Obama could direct Attorney General Holder to order the Chief Immigration Judge to create a special streamlined docket to handle the surge cases on a last-in-first-out basis. Rather than allowing those cases to drift into the regular detain/non-detain docket, the administration could order the Chief Judge to fast-track these cases in this “surge case” docket. Holder could order the Chief Judge to relocate immigration judges from less geographically active immigration courts in the nation to the newly created “surge docket” tomorrow.

"Also, immigration judges are not Article III judges—who sit in a co-equal branch of the federal government. Rather, immigration judges work for the executive branch.

President Obama could direct Attorney General Holder to order the Chief Immigration Judge to create a special streamlined docket to handle the surge cases on a last-in-first-out basis."

When did this happen?? This is extremely dangerous. No judge should be subject to the orders of the executive.

Obama's big and more government solutions always entail more money to hire more people to solve the problems he has let languish and fester into crises and scandals. If he would just lead, govern and manage his Executive Branch like he should be doing, most of these personnel additions would not be needed. He did the same with the VA scandal. His solution was to hire hundreds of new doctors into the VA system to help alleviate the backlog of waiting patients. But where does one hire hundred of physicians from? Off the street? From the homeless shelters? At the unemployment offices? We don't have nearly enough doctors to handle the private sector currently, let alone the VA of other government medical facilities. These idiots running the show are inexperienced, ignorant, ideologues who get their ideas from sitting around the faculty lounges of their Ivy League leftist universities. It will take years to ramp up the supply of physicians in this country. Unless, of course, we can import them with Obama's idea of the "best and brightest" flowing across the borders as poor, destitute uneducated, unskilled children.

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