SESSIONS PUSHES TO SPEED UP DEPORTATIONS
Under the Trump administration, the Justice department is ramping up to speed up deportation procedures for illegal immigrants. The Trump administration has sharply curtailed a once-common practice of granting long-term reprieves to immigrants targeted for deportation, a Reuters analysis of court records shows, adding to an already huge backlog of cases in U.S. immigration courts. But one thing has been standing in its way: Immigration judges often put these cases on hold.Now Attorney General Jeff Sessions is considering overruling the judges.One practice that is particularly infuriating to Sessions and other immigration hard-liners is called administrative closure. It allows judges to put deportation proceedings on hold indefinitely."Basically they have legalized the person who was coming to court, because they were illegally in the country," Sessions said during a speech in December.Sessions is using his authority over the immigration court system to review a number of judicial decisions. If he overturns those decisions, thousands of other cases could be affected. In this way, he is expected to end administrative closure, or scale it back.