Justice Dept. Seeks to Decertify Union Representing Immigration Judges.

Bill Barr’s Justice Department cannot properly manage a suicide watch over one of its most high profile detainees, but is taking time to try to decertify the union representing Immigration judges in its attempt to speed up deportations.

Newsweek

“The Trump administration has been accused of trying to “evade transparency and accountability” with its new push to decertify the union representing immigration judges in the U.S.

Last week, a Department of Justice (DOJ) spokesperson told The New York Times on Friday that the department had filed a petition to the Federal Labor Relations Authority seeking to know whether the National Association of Immigration Judges could have its certification revoked.

The union’s members, the DOJ argued, are technically “management officials” and should therefore be unable to collectively organize.”

Management officials?

Not so says the union president:

“This is nothing more than a desperate attempt by the DOJ to evade transparency and accountability, and undermine the decisional independence of the nation’s 440 Immigration Judges,” said Judge Ashley Tabaddor, who serves as president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, in a statement to NPR.

“We are trial court judges who make decisions on the basis of case-specific facts and the nation’s immigration laws. We do not set policies, and we don’t manage staff,” she said.

The DOJ’s suggestion that immigration judges should be viewed as managers is “absurd,” she said, adding: “We don’t even have the authority to order pencils.”

The article points out that already, Trump & Co. has appointed twice the number of new immigration judges than did the Obama admin…more than 100 so far.

The union is just one more obstacle in the way of our complete transformation into a banana republic.