A union for immigration judges alleged that the Department of Justice sent an email to all immigration court employees that included a link to an article from a white nationalist website that “directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs,” BuzzFeed News reported Thursday.
The National Association of Immigration Judges said the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) sent court employees a link to an article from VDare, a white nationalist website, in its morning news briefing Monday that included anti-Semitic references to judges.
The emails are sent to court employees on weekdays, and they include links to news articles about immigration. The blog post in question includes reporting about the DOJ taking steps to decertify the immigration judges’ union, and it allegedly includes pictures of some judges with the label “Kritarch” before their names, an anti-Semitic slur.
{mosads}“The post features links and content that directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs and the label ‘Kritarch.’ The reference to Kritarch in a negative tone is deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic,” union chief Ashley Tabaddor wrote in a Thursday letter to James McHenry, the director of the EOIR.
“VDare’s use of the term in a pejorative manner casts Jewish history in a negative light as an Anti-Semitic trope of Jews seeking power and control,” she continued.
A former senior Department of Justice official, who was not named, explained to BuzzFeed News that the email was “generated by a third-party vendor that utilizes keyword searches to produce news clippings for staff.”
“It is not reviewed or approved by staff before it is transmitted,” the official added.
Tabaddor demanded that McHenry take immediate action for the shared post, withdrawing the email and issuing an apology, BuzzFeed News reported. She also called on the EOIR to take “all appropriate safety and security measures.”
“Publication and dissemination of a white supremacist, anti-semitic website throughout the EOIR is antithetical to the goals and ideals of the Department of Justice,” Tabbaddor wrote.
EOIR assistant press secretary Kathryn Mattingly said in a statement to The Hill that the news briefings “are compiled by a contractor and the blog post should not have been included.”
“The Department of Justice condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms,” Mattingly said.
Updated at 7:18 p.m.