President Donald Trump dances at the conclusion of his Make America Great Again rally at ST Engineering in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, Oct. 23, 2020.
San Diego, California – Another wave of immigration judge terminations swept through the federal system on Friday, with 15 judges—many nearing the end of their two-year probationary period—being dismissed by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. One of the judges, multiple sources confirmed, was assigned to the San Diego Immigration Court, a critical site in an already overwhelmed system.
The move is part of a broader trend under the Trump administration, which has dismissed more than 50 immigration judges over the last six months, bringing the national bench from about 700 down to approximately 600. At the same time, the immigration case backlog has ballooned to an estimated 3.7 million, according to federal data.
Despite Congress allocating more than $3 billion this year for immigration-related activity—including the hiring of new immigration judges—the administration continues to shrink the judiciary responsible for handling removal proceedings, asylum cases, and green card revocations. Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, the union representing immigration judges, called the decision “outrageous and against the public interest.”
“This is hypocritical,” Biggs said. “You can’t enforce immigration laws when you fire the enforcers.”
In San Diego County, the recent firing brings the number of active judges at the primary immigration court downtown to just eight. The Otay Mesa Detention Center has three more. One of the judges removed from the downtown court had his name scrubbed from the federal website by Monday morning.
The firings, conducted without public explanation, have raised concerns that loyalty to the administration’s immigration goals—not judicial performance—is determining who stays on the bench. Typically, about 94% of probationary judges are converted to permanent status. But this year’s conversion rate is significantly lower.
“It’s pretty alarming,” Biggs said, adding that the goal appears to be “replacing career civil servants with political loyalists who will deliver faster removals.”
At a time when detention facilities are operating over capacity and delays are growing, the loss of judges threatens to slow the process even further. According to data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the average length of time to close a case in San Diego is now 447 days—up nearly 25% from last year.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said local immigration attorney Jordan Schweller. “If your goal is to deport people faster, you need more judges, not fewer.”
EOIR declined to comment on the latest round of terminations, as it has throughout previous cuts. The agency has also encouraged sitting judges to speed up decisions, suggesting they give oral rulings rather than written ones, and streamline asylum reviews.
Behind the scenes, however, the fallout has left some judges bewildered. One judge, terminated via email on Friday, said they had no regrets staying to the end: “I figured as long as I am here, I can do some good.”
