Independent Immigration Court Bill Gets New Push

A former judge’s account of being told to reverse bond rulings has given Senate Democrats a new case for moving immigration courts out of the Justice Department. Without Republican support, the bill is unlikely to move this Congress.

An independent immigration court, separate from the Justice Department that now employs every immigration judge, is back on the agenda in Congress. Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Dick Durbin of Illinois, joined by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, are pressing for legislation to take the courts out of executive branch control after former Annandale, Virginia, immigration judge Karen Donoso Stevens said supervisors directed her to reverse bond decisions, The Washington Post reported Oct. 27.

“We urgently need an independent immigration court to prevent these abuses from ever happening again,” Durbin said, according to the Post. Van Hollen called it an “abuse of power” that “must be stopped.” The Justice Department rejected the premise. Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, told the Post that EOIR “cannot tolerate judges who decline to follow the law in lieu of their own personal preferences” and said the paper’s reporting contained “misleading statements or misrepresentations,” without identifying them. White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said, “All illegal aliens receive full due process and have their claims heard.”

The original allegations and what a judge change means for Annandale cases were covered here earlier this week. The new development is the legislative response, and it turns a personnel dispute into a structural question: who should control the judges who decide deportation cases?

What the independent immigration court bill would change

The vehicle already exists. The Real Courts, Rule of Law Act of 2026, introduced in the House on March 5 as H.R. 7836 by Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, would create an Article I court system called the United States Immigration Courts, “independent of” the executive branch. A Senate version posted by Gillibrand’s office lists Durbin and Van Hollen among its cosponsors. The Post did not name the bill the senators are pushing, but the Senate text matches what they described.

Question	Today	Under H.R. 7836
Who employs the judges	Justice Department, through EOIR	A separate Article I court system
Who picks appellate judges	The Attorney General appoints Board of Immigration Appeals members	The President, with Senate confirmation, for 21 appeals judgeships
Who picks trial judges	The Attorney General	The appellate division, sitting en banc
Term and removal	No fixed term; judges are career attorney employees	15-year renewable terms; removal only for incapacity, misconduct, neglect of duty or practicing law, after notice and a chance to respond
Who can overrule a decision	The Board, and the Attorney General by certifying cases to himself	The court’s own appellate division

Sources: H.R. 7836 as introduced (March 5, 2026); 8 C.F.R. 1003.1 and 1003.10.

The last row is the real change. Today, an Attorney General who disagrees with immigration judges can rewrite the law for all of them by deciding a single case. That power has been used by administrations of both parties to set asylum, bond and docket-management rules, and an Article I court would end it.

Why the timing gives the idea new weight

The bench is turning over fast. The Post reported that the administration has dismissed more than 100 of the roughly 700 immigration judges, while EOIR’s own hiring table shows 634 judges at the end of fiscal 2025 and 662 on June 30, 2026, after 192 hires. Based on those EOIR figures, that implies about 164 departures in nine months. The Supreme Court’s Oct. 27 order leaving judges unable to administratively close new cases is a reminder of how much of the courts’ practice is set by regulation rather than statute.

The idea is not new. Lofgren’s 2022 version, H.R. 6577, cleared the House Judiciary Committee in December 2022 when Democrats held the majority, and the Congress ended without a floor vote. With Republicans now leading both judiciary committees, the Post noted that the legislation has little chance of passage without Republican support. Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Jim Jordan, the two committee chairs, did not respond to the Post’s requests for comment.

That makes the near-term fight less about the bill than about oversight. The practical questions are whether Democrats can force records on the Annandale bond reversals into the open, whether the appeal Donoso Stevens has filed against her firing, as Latin Times reported, produces findings, and whether respondents’ lawyers can show that a specific ruling changed after a supervisor’s call. Each would test the administration’s position that its judges are simply being held to the law.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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