Trump officials continue firing immigration judges as backlog grows

The Trump administration fired immigration judges in San Francisco, New York and Boston over the weekend “without cause or explanation,” the National Association of Immigration Judges announced on Monday. The move comes even as federal immigration courts have millions of cases waiting to be heard.

NAIJ said the judges were all “highly respected jurists with years of experience in immigration law and not recently hired judges under probation.” Among those fired was Judge Jeremiah Johnson, NAIJ’s vice president.

“The dismissal of more immigration judges makes no sense, it’s unjust,” Johnson said in a published statement. Based in San Francisco, Johnson was one of seven judges fired from the nation’s immigration courts.

The group called the firings “one more move to dismantle the
immigration adjudication system” and argued the moves mean “immigration courts no longer look like a justice system.” 

Unlike
other federal judges who are part of an independent judiciary,
immigration judges are employees of the Executive Office for Immigration
Review, the Justice Department agency charged with running the nation’s
immigration courts. Advocates have long complained this creates
conflicts of interest because the Justice Department is also the agency
responsible for prosecuting criminal immigration cases in federal
courts.

The Trump administration has rapidly moved to recraft the nation’s overloaded immigration courts.

Among the changes, the Trump administration began firing judges without explanation, reducing requirements and training for new incoming judges—and allowing any attorney, including military and administrative law judges to become a temporary judge—and shrinking the size of the Board of Immigration Appeals.

While court as “widely seen as independent institutions that apply the law fairly and consistently” the Trump administration has begun “systematically dismantling due process protections in U.S. immigration courts, said the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The moves prioritize “speed and enforcement over fairness, accuracy, and fundamental justice.”

Further, judges face new quotas to complete cases, and now cannot grant bonds allowing people to be released in most cases.

“The result is a system where life-changing decisions are made by less qualified judges under impossible time pressure, with fewer safeguards against error and growing barriers to due process,” the group said. “These dramatic new policies compound existing structural problems in the immigration court system that have severely eroded both its capacity to deliver just decisions in a timely manner and public confidence in its outcomes.” 

The moves come as the Trump administration deals with a backlog of around 3.8 million cases.

“This is an attack on due process, the
rule of law, human decency and judicial independence,” said Olivia
Cassin, a New York-based immigration judge who received a termination letter on Friday. Cassin has worked as an immigration judge for 10 years and presided over the juvenile docket, according to NAIJ. Cassin plans to challenge her wrongful termination
through legal action, the group said.

“Since January 20, an unprecedented 90
immigration judges have been fired” the group said, including 11 associate chief immigration judges, as well as mid-level managers who also hear some cases. Judges have also taken early-out offers or left
voluntarily for private practice or other positions in public service, the group said. 

The top two immigration judges are currently serving in acting positions, and the two regional chief judge positions are currently vacant, according to website for the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, a part of EOIR.

NAIJ also noted as the Trump administration is firing experienced immigration judges, the Justice Department launched an advertising campaign seeking “deportation judges,” a term the group called “insulting.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem promoted the ads on social media. “If you are a legal professional, the Trump Administration is calling on YOU to join @TheJusticeDept as a Deportation Judge to restore integrity and honor to our Nation’s Immigration Court system,” Noem wrote.

The Justice Department similarly gave away the game by posting a recruitment ad,  telling applicants they could “become a deportation judge” and “define America for generations,” the Guardian reported.

It remains unclear why the judges were targeted for removal, and Justice Department officials did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

However, the judges were more likely to grant asylum—or some form of
protection—allowing people to stay in the U.S., according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse, a nonprofit group that uses the Freedom of Information
Act to understand federal immigration data. 

In San Francisco,
five judges were removed before the weekend, including Johnson, as well as
Judges Amber George, Louis Gordon, Shuting Chen and Patrick Savage, KQED
reported.

While
the average asylum grant rate in San Francisco is around 68 percent,
among those removed the grant rate ranged between around 89 percent to
91 percent. Further, earlier this year, the Justice Department
terminated three judges from the bench who had the highest asylum rates.

Comparatively, the asylum grant rate for immigrants in Tucson is just under 27 percent, according to TRAC.

Meanwhile,
new data from the immigration courts show judges are increasingly less
likely to grant asylum, and the overall rate has been cut in half
compared to a year earlier,

In August 2025, only 19.2 percent of
asylum seekers were granted asylum, according to most recently available
data. A year earlier, the grant rate was 38.2 percent, TRAC said.

Kyra S. Lilien, a former immigration judge, said she feared getting fired.

Through January and February, the director of EOIR began sending memos she found “blatantly insulting” and there were mass firings every few months, including the so-called “Fork in the Road” email sent out by Trump administration officials, Lilien said during a conversation about the courts and the overall backlog hosted by the Migration Policy Institute.

Lilien was based at the immigration court in Concord,
Calif., but was removed just before she completed her probationary tenure despite “excellent performance reviews,” she said on Monday.

She also criticized arrests at the nation’s immigration courts, which created an “overall climate of fear in the court. It was an extremely tense environment, as was mentioned, there was a definite chilling effect on appearances,” she said.

In March, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began arresting people as they arrived for court, including in Phoenix.

Quoting immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks, Lilien argued the immigration court system means “immigration judges hear death penalty cases in a traffic court
setting, and it is absolutely true, the stakes are very high and the
resources are very limited.”