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GOP Lawmakers Probe Biden’s Firing of Immigration Judges Appointed by Trump

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


President Joe Biden appears to have angered Republicans once again with his latest move regarding immigration and border issues.

As sections of the U.S./Mexico border remain wide open and chaotic, Republican lawmakers want to know why the president recently fired immigration judges appointed by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, the Washington Examiner reported last week:

The top two Republicans for judicial matters in the House and Senate have launched an investigation to determine if the Biden administration terminated federal immigration judges and replaced them with more progressive judges.

Republicans on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Sen. Chuck Grassley (IA) and Rep. Jim Jordan (OH), sent Attorney General Merrick Garland a letter Wednesday demanding answers about the Department of Justice’s termination of several judges who were hired during the Trump administration.

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“At least some of these terminations appear to have been the result of a coordinated effort between the Biden-Harris Administration and far-left immigration advocates,” Grassley and Jordan wrote in their letter. “In fact, in tweeting about two of the terminations, one such advocate commented: ‘I’m immensely proud to have participated in this campaign.’”

The GOP lawmakers charged that terminations of at least a half-dozen judges appointed by Trump were violations of the Civil Service Reform Act, which forbids discriminatory retaliation against government employees over their political beliefs.

“We are concerned about the complete lack of transparency and lack of notice provided to these judges,” said the National Association of Immigration Judges in a statement, according to the Examiner.

“The Agency should but has failed to provide meaningful feedback to probationary judges throughout their probationary period so that they have an opportunity to address any Agency concerns. To the contrary, it is our understanding that the judges were given satisfactory performance evaluations,” the statement continued.

The Washington Times was first to report on the firings:

The Biden administration has been quietly packing the nation’s immigration courts, ousting Trump-hired judges and installing judges deemed to be friendlier to the immigrants whose cases they hear, in what one Justice Department official called an “unprecedented” injection of politics into the courts.

They are part of a massive upheaval in the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which has seen four of its top officials pushed out of their jobs. The director was among the four and, for the first time in the agency’s history, was removed involuntarily.

“It’s an attempt to weaponize the courts along ideological lines,” Matthew J. O’Brien, one of the two judges ousted from Arlington, Va. told the Times. “It’s court-packing on steroids. It’s court-packing by deletion and then addition, because they’re getting rid of judges and they’re replacing them with people who meet their ideological framework.”

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O’Brien was approaching the end of his two-year probationary period. Biden’s Justice Department refused to make his position permanent.

“This turnover is unprecedented in the history of EOIR, and it all appears to be politically motivated in an effort to install Biden allies and pro-Democrat advocacy group supporters in both leadership and adjudicatory positions,” one Justice Department official, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution, told the Times.

There are nearly 600 federal immigration judges, and they are responsible for determining whether an illegal migrant has a valid reason for remaining in the U.S.

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“That makes immigration judges a central part of the Biden administration’s push to clear the dockets and grant leniency to longtime immigrants without documentation who don’t rise to the level of priority cases for deportation. Critics deride it as a ‘shadow amnesty,'” the Times said.

O’Brien said that over the past couple of months he only heard a few substantive cases, while a normal workload would have involved dozens of such cases per month, the Times reported. The reason for the reduced workload, according to O’Brien, is that Biden administration lawyers are working with attorneys for the illegal migrants to get cases dismissed.

“Over the last two months, they’ve dismissed literally everything,” O’Brien said.

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