A Houston – area attorney says firing immigration judges will probably make the already large backlog of immigration cases even worse.
On Thursday, the Texas Tribune found out that two out of five Texas immigration judges fired by the Trump administration were working in Houston courts.
Noelle Sharp and Brandon Jaroch were first made immigration judges in 2021, as noted in a notice from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) that year. Before becoming an immigration judge, Sharp was an attorney and, in the late 2000s, the Director at the Tallahassee, Florida Catholic Charities Office of Refugee Resettlement Services. Jaroch has held several government jobs. He was a federal public defender in 2019 and a U.S. attorney in 2015 for the district of Nevada.
The EOIR refused to talk about personnel matters on Friday.
Charles Foster is the Chairman of Foster LLP, a law firm with offices in Houston, Austin, and Dallas. He said he doesn’t know the details of this decision, but there seems to be a general trend.
He said, “If it’s like what’s happening in general, some of the reasons could be really small. Maybe they spoke up, wrote an article, complained, or seemed to be on one side. Common sense tells you that if you have a big backlog, having fewer judges will just make that backlog bigger.”
Over the years, the backlog in immigration courts has grown a lot. According to the Congressional Research Service, the number of cases waiting in courts has gone up every year since 2006. By the 2024 fiscal year, there were almost 3.6 million cases waiting.
Foster said firing judges would likely also affect local courts. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that Harris County has an “unauthorized population” of 481,000 people.
He said, “We have more judges because we have more cases, and we have more cases because more people have immigration problems. Every place in the country has a backlog, but maybe none as big as Houston’s. So, clearly, it will affect the courts here.”
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