GAO: Immigration review office needs a governance structure to guide its workforce planning efforts. Image: Zolnierek/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review has succeeded in increasing the number of immigration judges from 338 in 2017 to 659 today but during that time the number of pending cases increased by a factor of four to more than 2.2 million, the GAO has said.
In testimony before a Senate committee, a GAO witness cited its report from earlier this year finding that the EOIR “does not have a governance structure to guide its workforce planning efforts and hold leadership accountable for progress on workforce goals,” as the GAO had recommended in 2017.
“Given its longstanding challenges in this area, establishing a documented governance structure for workforce planning would better position EOIR to institutionalize improvements moving forward,” the GAO said.
The testimony also said that while the EOIR had revised the criteria for evaluating the judges, it had not assessed their views of the program, and that while a new electronic filing system was put in place two years ago, “staff stated they experience outages and delays” when using one of the key features of that system.
The testimony follows a recent report from the Congressional Research Service raising similar issues. That report said that based on projections of incoming cases and future attrition, 300 more would be needed to begin to work down the backlog and that to eliminate it in even 10 years would require hiring an additional 700.
That report added that while the Justice Department has been working on challenges in IJ hiring, by the nature of the positions the process can be lengthy, as is the learning process once someone is on the job.
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