Authority and duties of the administering agency

(a) Duties of the Director The Director of the Office of Access to Justice may promulgate such rules, policies, and procedures as may be necessary and appropriate to carry out the grant program under this Act, including the following: (1) Establishing competitive grantmaking procedures to identify grant recipients. (2) Targeting grants in a manner that best accomplishes the following objectives and priorities: (A) Advancing a legal services workforce trained and equipped to implement an independent legal defense for individuals facing deportation that ensures high-quality, independent legal representation, regardless of ability to pay, prior contact with the criminal legal system, or the nature or perceived strength of their legal defense. (B) A national legal services infrastructure scaled to meet the representation needs of all individuals facing deportation. (C) Long-term growth of organizational or programmatic capacity to provide high-quality, holistic, and linguistically appropriate legal services to individuals facing deportation. (D) Providing support to State and local governments that have taken leadership and developed expertise in providing public funding for the legal defense of individuals facing deportation. (E) Addressing the crisis of lack of representation in parts of the country where such publicly funded programs have not been established. (b) Independent implementation Except as otherwise provided in this Act, the Attorney General, acting through the Director, shall exercise the authority under this Act in an independent manner in order to advance the primary objective of increasing access to representation for individuals facing deportation, and without regard to other priorities of the Federal Government related to immigration enforcement.