Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a directive to immigration judges Thursday telling them they can no longer shunt deportation cases off onto permanent wait lists and leave illegal immigrants free to roam the U.S.
Known as administrative closure, the wait list had become a favorite tactic of the Obama administration, serving to protect low-priority illegal immigrants from deportation.
Rather than pursue those cases, government attorneys would propose — and judges would grant — administrative closure by shipping more than 200,000 cases to the suspension list in what analysts said became a de facto amnesty.
Mr. Sessions, flexing his attorney general powers, ruled Thursday that the policy rested on shaky legal ground. He issued a precedent telling judges to decide the cases in front of them rather than rely on administrative closure.
“No attorney general has delegated such broad authority, and legal or policy arguments do not justify it. I therefore hold that immigration judges and the Board [of Immigration Appeals] lack this authority except where a previous regulation or settlement agreement has expressly conferred it,” Mr. Sessions said in his decision.
The ruling could, in the short term, speed up deportation decisions on the children and families that have surged into the U.S. over the past five years.
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