The U.S. government on Friday announced changes to the agency that runs the country's immigration courts, giving its director authority to weigh in and make appellate rulings on cases.
The interim rule published by the Justice Department faced immediate criticism by the immigration judges' union and immigration lawyers' association, which say the Trump administration is trying to exert political sway over immigration court decisions.
The rule gives the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review the ability to issue appellate decisions in cases that haven't been decided within an allotted timeframe. It also cements the administration's decision to create an office of policy for the immigration courts in 2017.
The rule comes as the Justice Department has sought to terminate the immigration judges' union and imposed performance targets and rules for docket management on judges amid a surge in Central American families seeking asylum on the southwest border.
The country's 440 immigration judges make decisions about who is eligible for asylum or green cards and who should be returned to their countries in courts backlogged with 900,000 cases. The judges are employees of the Justice Department, but their union has asked to become independent of the executive branch.
Immigration Judge Ashley Tabaddor, the union's president, said allowing the director to rule on court cases is the Trump administration's latest effort to strip judges of their autonomy and turn the courts into a federal law enforcement agency.
"They are collapsing what are supposed to be separate functions," she said. "It confirms what we have suspected, frankly, now for a couple of years: that their ultimate goal is to dismantle the courts."
The rule will be officially published Monday and takes effect 60 days after.
A message seeking comment was sent to the Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Kate Voigt, associate director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the office of policy has been involved in a number of recent changes at the courts, and said she was concerned about giving the director this expanded authority.
"I think it's another way to have political decisions imposed on the immigration courts," she said. "We're really concerned this is another way to try to speed cases along and undermine cases."
The office this week sent judges a morning news briefing that included a blog post from a virulently anti-immigration website that also publishes work by white nationalists. Assistant Press Secretary Kathryn Mattingly said the daily morning news briefings are compiled by a contractor and the blog post should not have been included.
"The Department of Justice condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms," she said.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.
Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.
Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).
Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.
That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.
In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.
Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.
In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.
“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.
Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.
It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.
“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.
It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.
While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.
“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.
Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.
Jill Lawless contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
