More bad news on the immigration law front. According to Deidre Davidson in today's Legal Times article Into the Line of Fire,

"The court of last resort for many immigrants is about to undergo a radical transformation that lawyers say will result in more deportations and fewer grants of asylum. Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced new regulations that will slash jobs from the Board of Immigration Appeals and require the board to eliminate its entire backlog of cases by next March. The immigration rights community is outraged."

Among the new changes:

The size of the Board of Immigration Appeals will be slashed from 19 to 11 members. This is important because the Board handles 30,000 cases a year of people seeking asylum or fighting deportation.

"The Board of Immigration Appeals is not a federal court. It is part of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which is itself a division of the Justice Department. The judges and board members are DOJ employees -- not administrative law judges, who by law are given a level of independence from the agency whose decisions they review."

It is also separate from the INS which has the authroity to arrest, detain and prosecute illegal immigrants. But both the INS and the Board report to Ashcroft, and he can overule them at his pleasure.

According to immigration law specialists, the slashing of the size of the Board will result in less due process for those trying to establish a permanent home here and "scanty" review of deportation decisions.

"In addition to cutting the board's size, Ashcroft's new rules expand the streamlining efforts and require that almost every appeal be reviewed by a single judge, rather than a panel. Only cases that present "difficult or novel" issues will get a three-judge review. "

"By going to the single-board-member review, one board member would have much more power. The only way [Ashcroft] can neutralize the liberals on the board while going to a one-board-member system is to get rid of them."

"Ashcroft also is eliminating the board's power of de novo factual review, except in cases where lower-level judges are "clearly erroneous" in their finding of facts in a case. Other changes include shorter time limits for filing appeals and briefs and for issuing decisions. "

Critics charge that fewer judges will mean "cases will get more-cursory looks, and more lower-level decisions, most of which side with INS initiatives to seek deportation or deny asylum, will be upheld....They also say immigrants may find it more difficult and more expensive to get a lawyer willing to handle their appeals due to the shortened time frames for filing appeals and briefs. About 36 percent of the aliens who appealed to the board in 2001 did not have legal counsel, DOJ statistics show. "

The largest outcry is against the reduction of judges. "[The board's] legitimacy in the eyes of the public and among the immigrant community is based on its ability to act in an independent and fair-minded way," says T. Alexander Aleinikoff, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and former INS general counsel. "If the attorney general uses his authority to pack and stack the board with members who tend to agree with the immigration service, that is not impartial justice."