As part of its unjust and unprecedented crackdown on immigrants and refugees, the Trump administration is reportedly pressuring judges in federal immigration courts to deport immigrants and firing judges deemed“insufficiently supportive” of Trump’s deportation-first agenda. As a result, over 100 judges have been fired and deportations have skyrocketed as the judges who remain feel the pressure to choose between deporting asylum seekers or losing their jobs.
Immigration judges work as a part of the Justice Department and can therefore be fired by Trump. The main duty of an immigration judge is to decide whether undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers will be deported or granted a form of legal status. Since Trump came into office, deportations haveincreased sharply, while the number of migrants granted asylum has plummeted, even as asylum seekers flee serious existential threats like violence, climate change, and poverty.
Trump’s firings are obvious retributions against judges who hand down decisions that don’t maximize deportations. Trump targeted two immigration judges in particular for dismissing cases involving international students who demonstrated vocal support for Palestine. Trump has replaced the judges he fires with ones who will help advance his mass deportation plans, including many former DHS prosecutors and military lawyers. The administration has gone so far to issue recruitment ads looking for “deportation judges.”
Trump is stacking immigration courts with judges who will do what he wants them to do. It’s just his latest attempt to impede upon immigrants’ due process rights.