Sponsors (11)
Official title: Establish, under Article I of the Constitution of the United States, a court of record, which shall be known as the United States Immigration Courts.
Introduced July 22, 2026 by Kirsten Gillibrand · Last progress July 22, 2026
The bill aims to improve immigration adjudication speed, continuity, and transparency by creating a new court structure with dedicated funding and procedural safeguards, but it shifts budget and hiring authority away from existing structures—raising costs, implementation burdens, and risks to independence and personnel protections.
People with pending removal or immigration cases keep their hearings and appeals moving to the new Immigration Courts and existing BIA/Attorney General precedents are preserved, avoiding abrupt legal disruption for noncitizens.
Immigration court staffing can be expanded and filled more quickly with pay competitive with judicial-branch peers, improving court capacity and speeding case processing.
The bill strengthens procedural protections for noncitizens (clearer notice, ability to inspect/rebut evidence, and access to counsel at no expense in certain proceedings), improving fairness in adjudications.
Taxpayers could face higher costs from increased personnel pay, expanded retirement liabilities for credited prior service, and administrative/transition expenses during implementation.
Concentrating authority in DHS and the new Immigration Courts (and moving roles away from the Attorney General) risks reducing adjudicative independence and increasing executive influence over immigration decisions.
Shifting budget authority out of the executive branch could create inter-branch conflicts, complicate federal budget coordination, and allow funding choices that diverge from broader immigration-enforcement priorities.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Creates an independent United States Immigration Courts, transfers EOIR functions and staff into it, allows the courts to set personnel/pay rules and their annual budget, and updates INA cross‑references.
Creates a new, independent United States Immigration Courts entity, moves the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) into that entity, and transfers personnel, cases, and funding into the new court structure. It authorizes the Immigration Courts to set personnel rules and pay outside normal Title 5 civil-service provisions, set their own annual budget (to be included in the President’s budget), and require reporting and periodic judicial-conference reviews. Sets an application date and four-year transition period for the transfer, establishes an appellate division of immigration appeals judges with staggered initial terms, preserves existing precedents and pending proceedings during the transition, and updates numerous statutory cross-references to replace Attorney General/EOIR roles with the new Immigration Courts and related entities.