“The Justice Department and its Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) have failed to complete significant parts of their 22-point plan to improve the performance of the nation’s Immigration Courts, according to a detailed analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). While major shortcomings were identified, the study also found areas where the proposed changes were adopted.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued the improvement plan in 2006 in the wake of a series of federal appellate court rulings that sharply criticized the Immigration Courts. The proposed plan also followed the publication of detailed statistical studies by TRAC and others documenting extraordinary disparities in how individual immigration judges were deciding asylum matters. The studies showed that case outcomes were frequently determined more by the outlook of a particular judge than the underlying facts.”