Career Retrospective: DOJ
It is highly unusual to read a career retrospective series from an attorney only seven years out of law school. However, I am thinking critically this summer about just what being a “mid-career professional” means to me. As a person with multiple marginalized identities, I have tended to minimize my professional experiences more often than not. I’ve done this at times in an effort to be non-threatening or to avoid seeming arrogant (perhaps as the result of internalized “impostor syndrome” or something like it). This series will explore the work I’ve done for various employers, in an effort to accurately assess the breadth and scope of my professional life so far. I hope it will give me clarity in thinking about just how much invaluable experience I have gained in a short amount of time—I hope it might help others struggling to do the same. The series begins with my experience at the Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review!
From 2016 to 2018, I worked as a Judicial Law Clerk and Attorney Advisor at the Arlington Immigration Court, under the Department of Justice Attorney General’s Honors Program. For those not familiar with the immigration court system in the United States, immigration courts are housed under DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. Similar to state and federal courts, immigration judges rely heavily on the legal research, writing, and analysis of law clerks to help them adjudicate cases. Some former immigration judges refer to immigration court as adjudicating “death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.” Immigration courts hear cases involving asylum, adjustment of status, motions practice, waivers of inadmissibility, cancellation of removal, voluntary departure, and other forms of relief. At the time of my clerkship, the immigration court backlog of undecided cases hovered at about 500,000—an unthinkable, alarming number at the time. Today, the backlog has reached more than 2 million cases as of January 2023. Stakes are incredibly high, as many immigrants claim they will face harm, torture, or death if removed from the country. Further complicating matters is the complex and horrific intersection of immigration and criminal law, where eligibility for immigration relief is affected by criminal arrests—not merely convictions.
A Legal Researcher, A Prolific Writer, and An Expert on Idiosyncrasies
As part of a small pool of law clerks, I worked directly with multiple immigration judges to protect due process and decide cases. I listened to multi-hour hearing recordings, conducted legal research on Westlaw and elsewhere, reviewed and scrutinized the evidentiary record, and authored legal decisions on a daily basis. My bread and butter were legal research and writing. I learned the judges’ formatting quirks and their writing styles; which arguments persuaded and which fell flat; which types of documentary evidence were reliable and which were not. I became an expert in the idiosyncrasies of multiple judges—truly an exercise in knowing your audience! I watched these immigration judges respond as best they could to the utter chaos of the early Trump Administration and its laser focus on the border and immigration courts. I watched immigration judges grapple with reduced autonomy during former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s tenure, wherein he wielded his statutory authority to influence and rewrite immigration case law with an anti-immigrant viciousness that shocked me. I watched these judges pivot as the law changed at what felt like the speed of light. I learned how judges think and process the law and the facts, and how their own experiences in practice influence the way they approach their seat on the bench as they strive to be impartial adjudicators and protectors of due process.
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of Advocacy
Through listening to immigration court proceedings and reading filings every day, I saw firsthand the work of some truly incredible advocates—and the work of deeply ineffectual advocates, be they in private practice or with the government. I learned quickly, as a very new attorney, what type of advocate I wanted to be as well as what type I would strive not to be. I paid close attention to which advocates were admonished by judges for ugly behavior, disingenuousness, or outsized aggression in court.
Convincing Unconvincable Judges
In many cases, an immigration judge will present a case file to a clerk with some idea of what they believe the outcome should be; a leaning one way or another. It’s the law clerk’s role to investigate the record and the existing law and to see if that predicted outcome is supported. Some of my proudest moments as a law clerk came when I was able to effectively persuade a judge that the law and the facts supported an outcome that might have saved someone’s life. In fact, at least one of the decisions I authored was upheld by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit when on appeal by the government. I took pride in earning the respect of these judges and felt a particular thrill when I was able to convince even the most skeptical of adjudicators.
Not Quite Muzzled, but Constrained Nonetheless
Some of the hardest moments of my clerkship were, of course, having to write legal decisions that I did not morally agree with. Having to put my professional duty before my own feelings and moral compass was a constant battle, but one that I found formative as I pursued other types of immigration advocacy in the years following my clerkship. During the earliest days of the Muslim and African Travel Ban in 2017, immigration attorneys flocked to airports to help people facing the ban—including DCA, a stone’s throw from the court. I struggled with the constraints placed on my ability to practice law outside of my work for the federal government. It felt like a cruel irony that I was poised to be of direct assistance during that crisis, but could not spring into action. As the Trump Administration set its sights on the immigration court system, I was unable to be vocal and educate the public about the system, its functions, its flaws, and its virtues. I resented having this niche knowledge but being unable to share it in the ways I desired. Finally, I was deeply disturbed during a two-week detail to an all-detained immigration court in California. At that court, housed next to an immigration detention center, I witnessed how little due process was afforded to detainees—whether with legal counsel or without. The experience was harrowing and brought to life, in horrid detail, many of the systemic injustices I studied in law school.
The Best First Job
Remember that 500,000 case backlog? My co-clerks and I were directly responsible for creating a detailed docket management strategy that could chip away at that backlog, including streamlining our roles and conducting data analyses that were presented to the Assistant Chief Immigration Judge for our region. My co-clerks and I also oversaw the doubling of the law clerk staff as efforts ramped up to reduce the backlog, managing larger teams of law clerks and intern classes than ever before.
Looking back, I believe my role as an Attorney Advisor at DOJ was the best first job I could’ve asked for. The work was highly technical, with real-world consequences. I found out I passed the bar during my time at DOJ. I was given heavy responsibilities very early in my career, and I benefited from learning from some of the most well-respected immigration judges in the country. Those immigration judges believed in my intellect and abilities, and they breathed a quiet confidence into me that I would do well to remember these days.
