Ever wonder what goes on in our immigration courts? Well here’s an embarrassing, albeit troubling vignette.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has filed a complaint with the Merit Systems Protection Board requesting disciplinary action against federal immigration Judge Carmene “Zsa Zsa” DePaulo for violating the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act prohibits partisan political activities by federal-government employees. Immigration judges are employees of the U.S. Department of Justice.
DePaulo (apparently no relation to the fabulous Hungarian actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor) is an immigration judge in Southern California. OSC says that DePaulo “promoted then-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s plan for immigration reform during a deportation hearing over which DePaulo was presiding in March 2016.”
According to OSC, the subject of the hearing was facing not only deportation, but also a ten-year ban on reentry into the U.S. DePaulo opined that Clinton intended to change this “pretty harsh thing” (the ban on reentry) provided “the Senate becomes a Democratic body and there’s some hope that they can actually pass immigration legislation.” Republicans, DePaulo told the courtroom, “aren’t going to do anything” about immigration “if they can help it” other than to “try to deport everybody.”
As the OSC’s Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner said, “When a federal immigration judge in a public setting uses her…
