Seeking Speedier Deportations, Ashcroft Plans Judicial Reforms

Immigrants fighting to stay in the United States will face a quicker road to deportation under a judicial reorganization plan unveiled by federal authorities Wednesday.

The plan, which drew immediate fire from immigrant rights activists, will restructure the board that hears appeals on immigration claims in an effort to eliminate a growing backlog of more than 55,000 cases. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, announcing the reorganization, hailed it as an important step in a broader effort to plug holes in the U.S. immigration system that were exposed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Some immigration appeals have been languishing for as long as seven years, posing a threat to national security, Ashcroft said. More than 300,000 immigrants that have been ordered deported have simply disappeared.

“When a case takes seven years, justice isn’t merely denied, it’s derailed,” he said.

The reorganization plan will allow judges on the Board of Immigration Appeals--currently three-judge panels--to act alone in deciding the bulk of cases. The plan will also prevent appellate judges from revisiting the facts of a case unless there is a clear error by the lower immigration court. And it will reduce the size of the appellate board from 23 judges to 11 judges as part of an overall “streamlining.”

“America is a nation built on immigration, and we welcome those who come here legally,” Ashcroft said. “However, we also need an immigration court system that commands our own respect, one that is fair, one that is prompt, one that is efficient.”

But opponents said the plan could allow the Bush administration to pack the board with more conservative judges and deprive immigrants of a fair hearing into claims of political asylum, family connections and other legal defenses that could help avoid deportation.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell University immigration law professor, told a House committee hearing on the issue Wednesday that the reorganization could produce a “staggering” workload for the downsized appellate board and force judges to “rubber-stamp” their decisions.

“The answer for an overburdened justice system is more and not less due process,” said Arthur Helton, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on immigration policy. “Instead of reducing the appellate safety net, the Justice Department should invest sufficient resources to ensure fairness for noncitizens subject to forced exile.”

In ordering the reorganization, Ashcroft relied in part on a recent audit that looked at a pilot program for streamlining the Board of Immigration Appeals. That audit was conducted by Andersen, the accounting giant now at the center of the Enron Corp. scandal. The firm was paid $49,850 to conduct the immigration study for the Justice Department.

Andersen concluded that the streamlining program was an “unqualified success” that sped the process without compromising the results. By consolidating the review, the appellate board should be able to complete an additional 825 cases per month, the study projected.

That’s good news, Justice Department officials say, for a judicial system that now handles about 30,000 appeals a year--a tenfold increase since 1984.

Justice Department officials complain that immigration appeals have become backlogged in part because in the last few years appellate judges have been much more willing to conduct “de novo” reviews, meaning that the findings of the lower court are essentially thrown out and the case is reviewed in its entirety.

Ashcroft “is unhappy with the way the board has assumed the power to revisit these issues denovo,” an aide said.

To reverse that trend, Ashcroft’s plan establishes that the appellate judges must accept the factual findings of the lower court, disturbing them only if they are “clearly erroneous.” The plan also bars the introduction and consideration of new evidence before the appellate panel, and it shortens the deadlines for filing and deciding appeals.

Highlighting the dangers posed by years-long delays, Ashcroft cited the case of an illegal immigrant accused of trafficking in $50-million worth of heroin. Ashcroft said the appellate board took more than 5 1/2 years to decide his deportation case. “During that time, the individual became a fugitive. . . . He still remains at large,” the attorney general said.

Critics called the Ashcroft plan a thinly veiled effort to reduce immigrant appeal rights and shed a number of Clinton administration appointees whom the attorney general and others regard as too liberal. After assailing the quality of immigration judges for years, civil libertarians credited the Clinton administration with appointing scholars, attorneys and others sympathetic to the immigrants’ plight.

“They’re going to get rid of the dissident elements,” predicted Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. “All the judges are going to be able to do after this is rubber-stamp underlying decisions.

“We’re going to increase efficiency by slashing the board from [23] members back down to 11? It’s completely counterintuitive. . . . They get 30,000 cases a year, and you’re going to have 11 judges. Do the math.”

The reorganization, expected to take effect in April following public comment, comes just a week after the nation’s immigration judges asked Ashcroft to sever them from the Justice Department because they believe that their legal independence has been compromised.

Justice Department officials said Wednesday that the reorganization was not in response to the judges’ request because the changes have been in the works for months.

“The confluence of all this is just coincidental,” one official said.

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Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell contributed to this report.