Politicization of immigration judges exposed.

ThinkProgress noted last week that the Justice Department has expanded its internal investigation of partisan hiring practices after Monica Goodling admitted that she “considered party affiliation in screening applicants to become immigration judges.” The Legal Times sheds new light on this controversial process:

Historically, those hired for the positions were vetted by the Executive Office of Immigration Review and its recommendations were forwarded to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General — where they were almost uniformly approved. Sometimes this process took place without public advertisements for the posts and without competing candidates. But in recent years, that process came to be inverted: instead the attorney general’s office exercised “direct-hire” authority in selecting a candidate who was then sent to EOIR. Rarely, if ever, did EOIR object to a candidate — even if the person lacked any background in immigration law. [...]

The effort picked up speed under Gonzales’ tenure, when Goodling took over Sampson’s hiring responsibilities. If Sampson or Goodling had a suggestion, [EOIR] didn’t look for any other candidates. “In the past year, we were just asked to give the city and then we would get a name or two,” Rooney says.

Members of the immigration judiciary noticed the shift. “A lot of my colleagues in [the immigration] bar seemed to have applications pending for years without ever being interviewed while people with contacts at the White House were being appointed at warp speed,” says Bruce Einhorn, who retired as an immigration judge in Los Angeles in January.

This hiring process has since been ended, following a lawsuit by a Hispanic immigration lawyer who charged that the Justice Dept. “discriminated against her on the basis of her race and gender when it chose two white men for the vacancy.” But the legacy of Gonzales lives on.

Muckraker and emptywheel have more.