The Unbalancing of the Immigration System
Guest blogger: Garret Webb, law student, University of San Francisco
Since the beginning of the Trump administration, there has been a systematic elimination of sympathetic immigration judges. According to KQED, 90 immigration judges have been removed by the Trump administration since he took office.1 Many of these judges have been sympathetic to immigrants or have a history of representing immigrants.2 The removals have been devastating to local immigration courts. San Francisco, at the beginning of the administration, had twenty-one judges. After all the removals, there are only nine remaining.3
Many judges are fired suddenly and not given any reason for why they are being fired.4 There has been no official justification for the removal of these judges. With no official reason being offered the intent of these firings must be inferred. The specific firing of sympathetic judges most likely means the administration is attempting to fill theses positions with judges who are more hostile towards immigrants. This idea is further supported by an ad the Department of Justice released for open judge positions. In this ad it states they are looking to hire more “deportation judges”.5
This hiring strategy is very alarming and is skewing justice in a completely unacceptable way. It is natural for a judge to bring bias into the courtroom and, unfortunately, an unavoidable part of the legal system. However, it is completely improper to deliberately stack the judges to force an outcome that the administration wants. The justice system prides itself on being impartial and the same should apply to immigration judges. The administration is seeking to exert an inappropriate amount of influence over the decisions of immigration court proceedings, and it should not be allowed.
The removal of these judges causes additional harm to immigrants by clogging up the immigration system. The system already has a problem with delays and many people have been waiting for their day in court for years. Now that there are fewer judges, this wait will be extended for who knows how long. There is no indication about how quickly these spots will be filled either, so the lack of judges could extend court dates by multiple years.
These problems stem from one issue in the way that immigration judges are set up, and that is the government’s ability to fire them at will. An immigration judge is part of the executive branch, so it is not subject to the same requirements as a federal judge when they are being fired.6 An immigration judge can be fired at will without cause. If the ability to fire at will was removed and the government was required to show good cause that is unrelated to political opinion, but instead required some misconduct on behalf of a judge, that would be a more beneficial system.
Requiring cause to fire immigration judges would have all around benefits. The judges would not live in fear of being randomly fired or have their judgment affected by trying to avoid the perception of being too lenient. The political parties removing the judges would also benefit because there are clearly judges that the different parties favor, and the judges that the party agrees with would be safe from being fired by the opposing party when they are in favor. Immigrants too will benefit. There will be more access to judges, allowing them to have speedier court dates, the more sympathetic judges will remain in office, and most importantly, the immigration system will not be balanced against them by improper conduct.
There are many fighting this policy of firing judges already. Tania Nemer, a former immigration judge in Ohio, filed a claim of improper dismissal based on gender, dual citizenship, and previous run for local office as a Democrat. Hopefully, this will be a successful claim and strike a blow against these firings. Any judges who have the means should follow suit and resist the unethical procedures the Trump administration is conducting.
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