In his classic stream-of-consciousness style, President Donald Trump took aim at immigration judges, saying “I don’t want judges, I want border security.”
“I don’t want people coming in,” he said, referring to immigrants. “If a person comes in and puts one foot in our ground, it is essentially ‘welcome to America, welcome to our country,’ and you never get them out.
“Because they take their name, they bring the name down, they file it, they let the person go, they say ‘show back up to court in one year from now,'” he continued. “One year. But here’s the thing, that in itself is ridiculous. Three percent come back.”
According to a 2016 report from the Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a collection of nonpartisan reports on federal spending and enforcement actions, in 2015, 86 percent of undocumented immigrants who were released from detention and given a later court date showed up.
Trump also attacked the entire process by which we choose immigration judges, calling the nomination and vetting process “graft.”
“Who are these people?” he said, of immigration judges. “When we vet the single federal judge, it goes through a bid process, everybody that’s ever met her or him, they come, they complain, they don’t complain, they say he’s brilliant, she is brilliant, he’s not smart enough to be a judge, now we are hiring thousands and thousands — what country does this?”
He added that people “line up” to become immigration judges, calling the process “horrible.”
Immigration judges are selected by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Department of Justice.
Trump also asserted that some immigration lawyers are “bad people” for coaching asylum applicants about what to say during their hearings.
Watch below:
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) June 19, 2018
