All Practitioners Will Be Required To Register With Eoir Under Proposed Rule

IMMIGRATION LAW & POLICY

Removal Procedures and Defenses

All practitioners will be required to register with EOIR under proposed rule
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 18, No. 1, February 17, 2004

All attorneys and representatives who appear before immigration judges or the Board of Immigration Appeals will be required to register with the Executive Office for Immigration Review in order to obtain a "user ID" once a rule recently proposed by the U.S. Dept. of Justice becomes final.

Under the proposed rule, each registered immigration law practitioner would be assigned a unique user ID and issued a password. After the registration system was in place, practitioners would be required to provide their user ID when filing an entry of appearance in a case. Practitioners who failed to register would not be allowed to represent clients before the immigration courts or the BIA. Under "extraordinary circumstances" and only one time per practitioner, an immigration judge could allow a practitioner who had not previously registered to appear before him or her, but only after requiring that the practitioner provide, on the record, the information he or she would have to provide when registering. The IJ would instruct such a practitioner to register online immediately after the hearing.

Practitioners would be required to register online, either from their own computers or via a "dedicated practitioner workstation" that would be available in each public EOIR facility. At the initial registration, they would have to provide their full name, their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number, their mailing addresses, their e-mail address, and limited data about their background, including any bar admissions or, for accredited representatives, the name of and contact information for the recognized organization with which they are associated.

According to the proposed rule's supplementary information, the DOJ is instituting this registration requirement as a component of a new electronic system it is developing for the filing of immigration court cases and appeals to the BIA, and for accessing case files. The user IDs will be instrumental to the EOIR's new electronic case-tracking, scheduling, and practitioner-notification systems, according to the DOJ.

Practitioners, in turn, will be able to maintain and update their EOIR registration information online and, eventually, to submit and retrieve documents to/from the EOIR via the Internet.

The EOIR has not yet set a date by which it will begin registering practitioners. According to the proposed rule's supplementary information, the agency "will provide a minimum of 60 days advance publicity of the availability of the system before adherence to the registration system's requirements will become mandatory for practitioners."

Any written comments on the proposed rule must be received by the EOIR on or before Mar. 1, 2004.

68 Fed. Reg. 75160-64 (Dec. 30, 2003).