Attorney General William Barr issued a decision limiting aliens’ options to fight deportation late Friday, furthering the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. The little-noticed decision, made through the attorney general’s unique “certification” power, removes a long-standing path to disqualify aliens with multiple drinking and driving convictions from the cancelation of deportation orders.
Barr’s new decision establishes that he is following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, by using certification to overturn sometimes decades-old precedent and limit paths to deportation appeals. Sessions issued decisions on five cases during his tenure. Barr has now issued four. In its eight-year span, the Bush administration issued 16 decisions. The Obama and Clinton administrations issued four and three respectively.
Barr can make such sweeping decisions over immigration law because unlike most of the federal court system, immigration court is part of the executive branch, not the judiciary, and is housed within the Department of Justice. That makes the attorney general both the nation’s top prosecutor and, in the case of immigration courts, its top judge. As top judge, Barr can essentially pluck cases from the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is effectively the appellate arm of the immigration courts, for “certification.” After reviewing those cases, he can issue binding rulings on how immigration courts should interpret the law.
In the decision, Matter of Castillo-Perez, Barr ruled that two or more DUI convictions disqualify an alien from appealing orders for deportation, on the ground that multiple offenses contradict the “good moral character” clause of U.S. Code. The “good moral character” standard is used throughout the immigration system. Aliens must prove they have had good moral character for a set period of years when requesting cancellation of a deportation order and in applying for green cards, among other immigration processes.
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