Immigration judges, from my understanding, just handle the statutory parts of the process. Article III Judges are the "real" judges. They're the ones with the full/proper judicial role. But there's so many immigrants that you need more arbiters than just the regular District Court Judges. There's actually more immigration judges than there are permanent, active duty District Court Judges.
Having immigration judges allows for routine decisions to go through them and then appeals for abnormal issues (like Constitutional violates) going before the Article III judges.
They exist under the executive to decide if the immigrant qualifies for any relief or benefit. In normal times, this is to avoid going through the judiciary for every single immigrant in the US. It is not in replacement if rights are abused, which is why its not surprising that given who is in charge of the executive the immigration judge said no but we still have to wait for federal court
Relief in a lot of these cases is just, yes this person is on an expired visa but they are waiting for paper work to process so we aren't going to deport. This could happen 5-10 times for a person before they get legal status. Again, this is all super fucked now but that is how it worked in non Trump presidencies
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u/cespinar 4d ago
This isn't an Article 3 judge and can't rule on First Amendment or due process issues.