Politically Connected Immigration Judges Unlikely to Face Consequences

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

DOJ Officials May Have Committed a Crime in Appointing Them

Justice Department officials likely broke the law in getting Francis Cramer his job. But that doesn't mean he's going to have to give it up any time soon.

Bush appointees gave Cramer, a longtime friend of Karl Rove, a coveted seat as a federal immigration judge in 2004. He was one of several dozen judges who got their jobs on the immigration bench in a system that based appointments on political connections, beliefs and loyalty to President Bush and the Republican party, an internal Justice Department investigation found this week.

Taking political persuasion into account in these positions is against the law because immigration judges are considered career civil service jobs not political ones. Once these judges are in, they are almost certainly in for good, experts say. And many fear their appointment will have serious consequences for the way immigrants' cases will be judged.

...

There was little in Cramer's background as a New Hampshire-based commercial and personal injury lawyer that exposed him to immigration law. But Cramer had something better: political connections. He'd worked for Republican Sen. Judd Gregg and most importantly, the report found, he was childhood friends with Rove, one of President Bush's closest advisors.

Cramer's connections helped him win a nomination to the U.S Tax court, the IG found, but his nomination stalled after the American Bar Association raised questions about his qualifications. So in 2004, D. Kyle Sampson, then counselor to Attorney General John Ashcroft, who knew Cramer was a Rove loyalist, helped Cramer land a job as an immigration judge in Boston in 2004, according to the inspector general report.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5480673&page=1

[Hydra]

1. Great!

We get shit people in the DoJ and the courts, and they aren't going anywhere? That sounds like we got screwed twice.

[seafan]

2. Thanks, Monica, for your loyal service to George W. Bush and not the US Constitution..

Monica Goodling says she was given the green light to hire immigration judges based on their political qualifications., May 25, 2007

[LuckyLib]

3. As we have come to expect, the * admin had its own rules with the White House the sole source

for generating candidates.

(article by Jamie Gorelick)

<snip> "Last month, we learned that political functionaries deputized by Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales had screened the best and the brightest coming out of law schools, judicial clerkships and other positions to weed out those who appeared to be Democrats or who might hold liberal ideas; favor was shown to Republicans, members of the Federalist Society, and those considered to be good and loyal conservatives. As the department's inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility noted, this is illegal."

<. . . in 2003, the apolitical process for selecting immigration judges and prosecutors was stood on its head. A chief aide to Attorney General Ashcroft (and later to Attorney General Gonzales) 'outlined a new process for hiring that listed the White House as the sole source for generating candidates.'"


http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/26074199.html?location_refer=$urlTrackSectionName