Immigration Judicial Complaints Remain Cloaked

A federal judge has ruled that identities of Immigration Court judges targeted by misconduct complaints can remain secret, including information like gender and even location of the court. The National Law Journal reports that “… the immigration office disclosed 16,000 pages associated with 767 complaints in the lawsuit, filed by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) in June 2013. The government released nonconfidential information from substantiated and unsubstantiated complaints. The names of individual judges were redacted.”
 
The government argued the public release of the judges’ names and other identifying information would infringe privacy interests. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper agreed, pointing out that the judges are career civil service employees and have privacy rights associated with that standing. That is a reference to Immigration Court judges not being “judges” in the typical sense, but are actually employees of the Justice Department.