A union representing federal immigration judges said that the Trump administration fired five judges from immigration courts in Texas. This has led to worries that the already large backlog of cases will get even worse. There are also concerns that the administration will rely more on quick deportations that bypass the courts completely.
The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers said these judges worked in courts in Houston, Laredo, and El Paso. Three of them were associate chief judges. They were in charge of running the courts and putting policies into action.
The union said that these five are part of 28 employees of the U.S. Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review who have been let go in recent weeks. There are around 700 immigration judges in the 71 immigration courts across the country.
The Texas Tribune found out the names of two of the associate chief judges who were removed. They are Brandon Jaroch from Houston and Noelle Sharp from Houston. When the Tribune called them, Jaroch and Sharp said they had been removed from their positions but didn’t want to say more.
Jaroch used to be an assistant United States attorney and a federal public defender. He has over 20 years of experience in the government and the military. Sharp used to be an immigration lawyer and had been a judge since at least 2021, according to their bios in a 2021 press release.
The Tribune asked the Executive Office for Immigration Review for a list of all the judges removed across the country. But a spokesperson said the office “won’t comment on personnel matters.”
This change in the nation’s immigration courts comes as President Donald Trump is trying to keep his promise to deport millions of undocumented people from the U.S. In just over a month in office, Trump has made a lot of executive orders and directives. These are starting to change the nation’s immigration and asylum system, and they are also scaring immigrant communities.
Matt Biggs, the president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said that removing judges who are supposed to decide the record 3.6 million pending immigration cases won’t help Trump’s efforts. Federal immigration judges usually hear 500 to 700 cases a year, he said. “You would think they wouldn’t be firing judges in Texas of all places,” Biggs told the Tribune. “We can congratulate President Trump because he just made the immigration case backlog worse.”
Lawmakers, government watchdogs, and researchers have long said that the nation’s immigration courts are in a bad situation.
A 2023 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the backlog of cases in immigration court had more than tripled since 2017. The government oversight agency had earlier suggested that the immigration courts office make a plan for its workforce. But that didn’t happen.
“The effects of the backlog are big and affect many people,” the GAO wrote in a 2023 post. “Some non – citizens, including children and families, have to wait years for their cases to be heard. The delays mean that vulnerable people who might be eligible for protection, like asylum, have to wait. They also make it take longer to deport those who don’t have a valid reason to stay in the U.S.”
By the end of last fiscal year, the backlog had grown to almost 4 million.
Kathleen Bush – Joseph from the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute said that because of this, immigration judges, who have to deal with a very complex area of law, are handling bigger and bigger caseloads. They don’t have enough staff to help them look up relevant case law and understand the latest legal precedents.
At the same time, undocumented immigrants who might be eligible for protection might not get it. And those who aren’t eligible might not get a decision on their case in a timely way. The quality of the judges’ decisions goes down, which leads to more appeals. This makes the courts’ problems even worse, Bush – Joseph said.
“In my opinion, the Trump administration is trying to avoid the courts overall,” Bush – Joseph said, pointing to the expansion of a program that speeds up deportations.
The expedited removal process allows the U.S. to deport someone without a hearing in front of an immigration judge. This process has usually been used near the U.S. – Mexico border to send back people who just arrived in the country.
The Trump administration has made it so that this process can also be used for undocumented immigrants who are farther from the border and have been in the country for less than two continuous years.
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