“Don’t Trust These Courts”: Trump’s Terrifying New Immigration Judges

A similar number have retired. To replace them all, the agency has opened a massive recruitment drive, offering up the specialized bench to some 140 individuals who, for the most part, have no experience practicing immigration law. Instead, some of the newly hired judges include a divorce lawyer who swore to “fight exclusively for the rights of men,” a Minnesota attorney who backed the ICE raids in Minneapolis that resulted in two U.S. citizens being killed by federal agents, and a judge who denied humanitarian protection to a Serbian immigrant because he didn’t look “overtly gay.”These people are being installed following “completely inadequate and highly biased” training, Christopher Day, a former immigration judge, told Congress in March.Former judges said that the hiring process, historically, could take months or even years. Their training involved five weeks observing court hearings, participating in mock trials, and practicing cases alongside their mentors before judging cases on their own. The National Association of Immigration Judges told the Post that the DOJ has since cut training down to three weeks.Ex-judges who were forced out claim that the administration is attempting to excise dissent from the judiciary, singling out those who have ruled against the government, reported the Post.“They’re trying to create a malleable workforce that will do what they want without question,” Kerry Doyle, an ICE official turned immigration judge, told the paper. She was hired under Joe Biden and fired last year before her tenure even began. “That’s what I think the goal is.”The Trump administration has made mass deportation a cornerstone of its immigration agenda, repeatedly pledging to deport as many as one million people per year while Trump is in office. Under ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Justice Department massively reallocated its resources toward arresting and prosecuting noncriminal immigrants, dropping tens of thousands of criminal probes in the process.Much to the chagrin of Trump’s supporters, the actual exit numbers have been lagging. In a December memo, the Department of Homeland Security revealed that it had deported some 605,000 individuals since Trump’s return, a figure that it artificially fluffed by claiming that DHS law enforcement had also encouraged 1.9 million people to “voluntarily self-deport.”Immigration court is one of the final, legally required steps before the Trump administration can throw the people out of the country, though the administration seems content to ignore the limitations of the law. Instead, the DOJ has attempted to ram cases through the system in an attempt to meet the White House’s demands, placing an enormous and unusual burden on America’s judges.Six federal judges were fired just this month for prioritizing the law over the White House agenda. At least two had ruled against high-profile deportation cases in the last year.The Justice Department’s rightward shift into the MAGA agenda has sparked concern among those in the legal community, who have argued that the agency’s recent politicization has undermined public confidence in immigration courts altogether. Some attorneys have expressed concern that even individuals who are likely to be granted asylum might avoid participating in the system, ironically avoiding the process of becoming documented for fear of being deported at the courthouse.“It sends a message that: Don’t trust these courts,” Muzaffar A. Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, told the Post. “That is not good for the immigrants, it’s not good for the rule of law, and it’s not good for the ultimate integrity and reputation of our court system.”