Executive
Office of Immigration Review, Department of Justice. Review Procedures for
Constituting the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) Panels and
Decisions,
354 pages.
Released to Stevens under the FOIA on April 20, 2011. Includes email traffic on Haiti.
Executive
Office of Immigration, Department of Justice. Procedures for
Determining Awards for EOIR Staff, Including Adjudicators (Immigration
Judges), 2010, 16 pages.
Released to Stevens under the FOIA on September 29, 2010.
Executive
Office of Immigration Review, Department of Justice. Performance
Awards for Individual Employees, FY2008, FY2009, and year to date 2010. 213 pages.
Released to Stevens under the FOIA on September 29, 2010.
Executive Office of Immigration Review, BIA Appeals by party (DHS or immigrant) and detained status, released to Stevens by Office of Public and Legislative Affairs, March, 2009.
The
BIA issues decisions that are signed by BIA "judges," i.e., attorney
adjudicators
employed by the EOIR. The fact that BIA decision are signed,
typically
by one to three BIA adjudicators, suggests that these are the
individuals who evaluated the merits of the appeals submitted by either
the respondent or the DHS attorneys. In fact, drafts of these
decisions are initiated and written in their entirety by
panels of EOIR attorneys, and then sent to the BIA "judges" on bond
paper without any
input from the folks whose imprimatur suggests they initiated the legal
reasoning the decisions contain. Both the attorneys on the BIA panels
and the
adjudicators are evaluated on the basis of their productivity; thus the
adjudicators face resistance if they request too many changes or
disagree with the panel conclusions.
For partial analysis and description of panels, please see the October 20, 2010 post on States Without Nations.
Kudos
to the EOIR for releasing additional information about the BIA appeal procedures on its own website, also in April, 2011!
Since the fall, 2010 the EOIR website has been releasing much
more
information than it has in the past, although it still needs
work. Why not provide the public the names and bios of the
BIA
judges?