ImmigrationProf Blog

The esteemed Harvard Law Review does not publish much immigration scholarship.  A student note on the immigration court system may be of interest to blog readers.  The system long has been criticized and, last year, a bill was introduced in Congress that would have brought reform.

Courts in Name Only: Repairing America’s Immigration Adjudication System
By the Harvard Law Review
Noncitizens in the United States face innumerable obstacles, many of which have now become well known. But even the supposedly neutral court system in which noncitizens’ cases are adjudicated currently functions as an executive tool for removal. This Note argues that the current structure of the immigration adjudication system — and the resulting executive control over it — subjects Immigration Judges to a variety of conditions that, taken together, bias the entire system towards removal. It then surveys existing proposals for structural reform and proposes numerous possible intermediate reforms.

KJ