Sponsors (8)
Official title: To establish, under article I of the Constitution of the United States, a court of record to be known as the United States Immigration Courts.
Introduced March 5, 2026 by Zoe Lofgren · Last progress March 5, 2026
The bill creates a standalone Immigration Courts system aimed at improving consistency, staffing, funding control, and transparency, but it concentrates adjudicative authority and adds administrative costs and operational changes that could reduce procedural flexibility, raise privacy and politicization risks, and impose transition burdens on courts and respondents.
Immigrants, judges, and attorneys: Establishes a statutory, standalone Immigration Courts system that standardizes procedures and creates clearer institutional structure for adjudication, which should improve predictability and consistent case processing.
Immigrants and affected parties: Preserves continuity during the transition—current cases, precedents, and procedural protections remain in force and many current judges retain full trial authority—reducing disruption to pending removal and adjustment proceedings.
Immigration Courts and federal employees: Gives courts more flexible hiring authorities, pay-setting, and procurement options so they can recruit and retain clerks, law clerks, and specialized expertise faster and more competitively.
Large numbers of immigrants and respondents: Centralizing rules and new statutory procedures, combined with limits on remote participation and faster processing pressures, could reduce procedural flexibility, impair access to counsel/evidence, and risk truncated fact-finding—especially for detained or remote respondents.
Taxpayers and court staff: Implementation, expanded excepted hiring, consultant contracting, added reporting, and new administrative structures will create real one-time and ongoing costs and administrative burdens that could divert resources from case processing unless additional funding is provided.
Federal employees and job applicants: Broad use of noncompetitive/excepted hiring and exempting certain pay rules risks reduced transparency and merit-based processes, increasing the possibility of favoritism or inconsistent compensation across the federal workforce.
Based on analysis of 16 sections of legislative text.
Creates an independent United States Immigration Courts system, transfers EOIR functions and staff, gives the Courts budget and staffing authorities, and sets transition and reporting rules.
Creates an independent United States Immigration Courts system by moving adjudicative functions, personnel, records, and funds out of the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and into a new statutory court structure. The bill gives the Immigration Courts budgetary and personnel authorities, new appointment and pay flexibilities, reporting and oversight requirements, transition rules for current judges and staff, and many statutory cross‑reference updates so existing immigration procedures, filings, and case transfers function under the new court.