WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s Justice Department has ordered leaders of the immigration judges union to seek supervisor permission before speaking, which some lawmakers and union leaders see as a move to silence critics of border policy despite Biden saying he is the “most pro-union president” ever.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — from GOP firebrand Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio., to Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. — are hounding the administration about its decision, with the issue of immigration and the crisis at the southern border front and center in the months leading up to a critical presidential election. The nation’s 700-plus immigration judges are the people who decide whether migrants seeking asylum in the United States can remain in the country legally, and they currently face a record backlog of more than 3 million cases.
“No one knows better what’s going on in the immigration courts than the judges themselves,” said Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, an organization affiliated with the judges union, the National Association of Immigration Judges. “There is so much misinformation on immigration, and this group is the only honest broker.”
In an email sent last month and obtained by NBC News, Sheila McNulty, chief judge of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the DOJ division that oversees the immigration courts, informed the top two NAIJ officials that, effective immediately, they “are subject to the same policies as every EOIR employee” and would no longer be allowed to speak freely with the press or before Congress, which had been the norm for more than 50 years.
This week, when NBC News contacted Judge Samuel Cole, a Chicago-based immigration judge and executive vice president of NIAJ, he said, “I’m not allowed to give you any comments at all. I’m sorry, I have to get pre-approved for anything I would say,” and then…
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