AG Garland Reverses Trump Era Policy, Will Allow Immigration Judges to Pause Deportation Proceedings

Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an opinion yesterday that overturned yet another Trump era policy involving immigration, this time allowing judges to pause deportation proceedings.

NBC News claimed that the move will cut down on the ballooning backlog of immigration cases in the U.S., now surpassing 1.3 million, according to data compiled by TRAC out of Syracuse University.

Garland argued that administrative closure allows for greater flexibility in case management by allowing for cases to be put on hold so that they can more fully focus on other cases.

The policy that was reversed was put in place by former AG Jeff Sessions and will now recognize the ability of immigration judges to administratively close a removal proceeding, which effectively removes a deportation case from the docket without technically disposing of the case.

The previous case was known as the Matter of Castro-Tum, where Sessions held that there was no legal authority to administratively close such a case, as had previously been done.

The Department of Justice issued a rule reflecting that position as recently as December 2020, but that was soon blocked on the grounds that it did not follow the rule-making process set by the Administrative Procedure Act.

Garland wrote, “Because Castro-Tumdeparted from long-standing practice, it is appropriate to overrule that opinion in its entirety and restore administrative closure pending the reconsideration of the 2020 rule through notice-and-comment rulemaking, which will ‘afford[] all interested parties a full and fair opportunity to participate and ensure[] that the relevant facts and analysis are collected and evaluated.’”

“It has been used, for example, to pause cases while the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudicates a noncitizen’s pending visa petition, or a noncitizen facing removal on criminal grounds pursues direct appeal or post-conviction relief in criminal court,” Garland added.

Garland explained that administrative closure could also be used to “facilitate the exercise of prosecutorial discretion” by allowing officials to ask judges to take certain cases off the docket.

The National Immigration Law Center celebrated the decision and stated in a tweet that it would “provide thousands of immigrants with a chance to pursue humanitarian relief without fear of deportation.”

👉BREAKING: Attorney General Garland restored immigration judges’ authority to utilize a key tool that will (1) reduce immigration court backlogs and (2) provide thousands of immigrants with a chance to pursue humanitarian relief without fear of deportation. 1/ pic.twitter.com/mjNrI4sTZf

— National Immigration Law Center (@NILC) July 15, 2021