As part of its massive efforts to reduce the size of the federal government, the Trump administration dismissed 20 immigration judges without providing a reason, according to a union official who made the announcement on Saturday.
Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, which represents federal workers, stated that on Friday, thirteen judges who had not yet been sworn in and five assistant chief immigration judges were fired without warning. In the past week, two other judges were dismissed for reasons that were comparable.
Who would take their place was a mystery. A request for comment Saturday was not immediately responded to by the U.S. Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is responsible for running the courts and overseeing its about 700 judges.
According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, there is a backlog of over 3.7 million cases in immigration courts, and the decision-making process for asylum petitions takes years. Adding judges and support personnel has bipartisan support, although expedited case decisions were pushed by certain judges under the first Trump administration.
Five high-ranking court officials, including interim director Mary Cheng, were already dismissed by the Trump administration. Several new directives, issued by current head Sirce Owen, a former appellate immigration judge, reverse regulations enacted by the Biden administration.
A coalition of nonprofit organizations successfully sued the Justice Department, restoring money for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that offer deportees information and counsel, which had been cut off last month.
Two of Trump’s main goals, reducing the size of the federal government and mass deportations, are touched on in the firings. Nearly all probationary employees who had not yet obtained civil service protection were instructed by agencies to lay off on Thursday. This might impact hundreds of thousands of workers. The typical tenure of a probationary worker is shorter than one year.
The federal workforce was targeted in the firings of judges, according to Biggs, the union representative, who claimed ignorance about whether the firings were meant to convey a message on immigration policy.
The way these folks are being treated is inhumane, he said. In every way, it’s terrible.
