The Trump administration has removed five immigration judges from federal courts in Texas, according to a union representing the judges. This move has raised concerns that the already growing case backlog will worsen and that the administration may increasingly rely on fast-track deportations that bypass court hearings.
The removed judges worked in Houston, Laredo, and El Paso, with three of them being associate chief judges responsible for managing courts and implementing policies. These five judges are part of a larger group of 28 employees from the U.S. Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review who have been removed recently.
Two of the associate chief judges, Brandon Jaroch and Noelle Sharp from Houston, confirmed their removal but declined further comment. Both have extensive legal backgrounds, with Jaroch serving as an assistant U.S. attorney and federal public defender, and Sharp having been an immigration lawyer before her judicial appointment in 2021.
The union’s president, Matt Biggs, criticized the removals, especially in Texas, where the case backlog is already overwhelming. Federal immigration judges typically handle 500 to 700 cases a year. Biggs argued that the firings would only increase the already substantial backlog of 3.6 million pending immigration cases.
The immigration courts in the U.S. have been in crisis for years, with a 2023 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office showing that the backlog has tripled since 2017. Some immigrants, including children and families, face years-long waits for hearings, with delays affecting those who may be eligible for asylum and extending the time for the removal of individuals who do not have valid claims.
The National Immigration Court backlog has grown to nearly 4 million cases by the end of the last fiscal year. Judges, tasked with navigating complex immigration law, are now managing even larger caseloads without enough support personnel, which further complicates the decision-making process, according to experts like Kathleen Bush-Joseph from the Migration Policy Institute.
The Trump administration’s efforts to expedite deportations through programs like expedited removal, which allows for deportations without a court hearing, are seen as a way to avoid the overwhelmed immigration courts. This process has traditionally been used near the U.S.-Mexico border but has now been expanded to apply to undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for less than two years.
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