ATTORNEY GENERAL/DOJ/IMMIGRATION/TRUMP PEOPLE/JEFF SESSIONS: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed attorneys from the Department of Justice on Tuesday [4-11-17] to increase the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, including laws against unlawful entry, human smuggling and identity fraud. It was yet another escalation of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, and immigrant-rights groups blasted the policy changes as ineffective and potentially illegal.
For all their opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, though, advocates actually back one of the new policies: the increased support for the immigration courts.
Sessions announced that DOJ will seek to add 75 immigration judges to the courts over the next year and will implement reforms to speed up the hiring process. These changes address a real problem with the immigration system—a nearly 600,000-case backlog at the immigration courts—and the move was a rare occasion in which advocates applauded the administration, though they were concerned how Sessions would implement the changes.”
-Danny Vinik, “The one area Jeff Sessions and immigration advocates agree,” Politico, April 11, 2017 5:57pm