The latest TRAC study shows that the Department of Justice and Executive Office for Immigration Review have failed to fulfill significant parts of a 22-point plan issued in 2006 by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to improve the U.S. immigration court system.

Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) today released its detailed analysis of immigration court records:

In summary, TRAC found that in the two years since the improvement plan was made public the Justice Department has failed to implement measures that would increase oversight of immigration judges, to make the immigration appeals process more rigorous, or to consistently seek funding for additional judges.

 

On the positive side, the agency has substantially completed improvements in other areas, publishing standardized court procedures, assigning supervisory judges to all courts, and providing new resources to support the work of immigration judges.

 

In many other cases, however, the improvements have only been partially completed or completed in ways that raise questions about their effectiveness. For example, the agency has assigned an Assistant Chief Immigration Judge to handle all complaints against judges, but has not published information about how the process works and was unable to provide data on how many complaints had been processed.

Read the full report here.