Immigration Judges Renew Bid for Labor Board to Restore Union

Federal immigration judges launched a renewed effort to win back recognition of their union Tuesday, arguing in a hearing that new regulations have undermined Trump-era claims they should considered managers.

A majority of the more than 700 federal immigration judges signed onto a petition asking the Federal Labor Relations Authority to restore recognition of the National Association of Immigration Judges, decertified by the board in 2020. The petition triggers new hearings on the union’s recognition.

“Even though the 2020 decision was faulty in our view,” said Mimi Tsankov, NAIJ’s president, “we think we can point to those changes now to establish that there’s been a substantial change in the responsibilities of immigration judges.”

Tsankov said she was speaking in her capacity as NAIJ president and not on behalf of the Department of Justice. The immigration court system is housed within the Executive Office of Immigration Review, a Department of Justice subagency.

The then-Republican controlled FLRA board reasoned in 2020 that immigration judges are managers who set policy when it moved to de-certify the union. Democrats regained control of the board, which oversees federal labor relations, in 2022 with the confirmation of Susan Tsui Grundmann.

In hearings that began Tuesday in Washington, counsel for the judges’ union argued that Biden administration regulations issued over each of the past three years “have substantially altered what immigration judges do on a day-to-day basis,” said Richard Bialczak, counsel for the NAIJ.

Those regulations include a 2022 asylum rule, a 2023 rule on circumvention of lawful pathways by immigrants, and a 2024 rule on “securing the border.”

Jill Anderson, general counsel for DOJ, said the agency disagreed with factual characterizations made by the union about changes to role of immigration judges.

Under the first Trump administration, the National Association of Immigration Judges called attention to an overloaded immigration court system. Backlogs in the immigration court have only been exacerbated since then, swelling to more than 3.7 million cases—triple the number in 2020.

When the hearings conclude, parties will have up to 30 days to respond with additional written information. FLRA’s regional director will rule on the re-certification petition; either party could then appeal that decision to the full FLRA board, a process that could stretch into the early 2025.

The judges previously contested the de-certification decision in federal court, but the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found last year that their case was premature because it hadn’t asked made a second request for reconsideration by the board.