Complaints Against Immigrant Judges FOIA

On November 13, 2012, American Immigration Council in conjunction with AILA and Public Citizen, submitted a FOIA request to the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) for all complaints made against immigration judges, records relating to those complaints, and an index of those requested records that constitute final opinions and orders made in the adjudication of cases. On June 6, 2013, when no response had been received from the Department of Justice (DOJ), the three organizations filed a lawsuit. On October 31, 2013, the DOJ released the first set of documents pursuant to the FOIA request and accompanying lawsuit. Pursuant to a negotiated agreement, the information released by DOJ covers cases resolved on or after October 1, 2009. The first set of documents includes entries made in the Immigration Judge Complaint Database, which contain a brief summary of each complaint’s history. From November 2013-June 2014, DOJ produced more detailed information about each complaint. The detailed information includes documents such as emails, letters, and decisions related to the complaint. The information is organized by the complaint numbers from the Immigration Judge Complaint Database entries. Due to the large volume of responsive records, the complaints are consolidated into zip files in batches of 100. Please note that the files are quite large and will take a few minutes to download.