More than 50 immigration judges, including a number in the Bay Area, have been fired nationwide since Trump took office in January, even while the government is simultaneously hiring more immigration judges, just probably Trumpier ones.
The Associated Press had a recent report that the Trump administration had fired around 50 immigration court judges since January, but focuses on a period in mid-July where 17 were fired “without cause” in the span of two business days. The suspicion among those being fired is that they got the ax because they’re not throwing out enough cases and allowing as many deportations as Trump wants. The judge firings have been spread across the country, including judges in California.
The Chronicle spoke to some of those fired Bay Area judges this week. US Immigration Judge Kyra Lilien was literally in the middle of hearing a case in Concord when she got her termination email. She had to interrupt the attorneys who were arguing before her and say, “I have just been fired.”
While the Justice Department is refusing to say how many judges they've fired, the Chronicle estimates that eight have been fired in the Bay Area over the last six months or so.
The Chron spoke to Judge Irma Pérez, who was fired in July, who feels she was canned because she wasn’t deporting enough people.
“If they want me to change anything they’ll have to change the laws in order to do that,” Pérez said to the Chronicle. “I tried to drown out the noise. Was there noise? Yes. Was it a lot with our group? Yes.”
This all seems counterintuitive, considering the Trump administration is actually trying to beef up the immigration court system. The AP notes that Trump has set aside $170 billion for its immigration crackdown, including $3.3 billion to bolster the courts. And the administration is hoping to increase the number of immigration judges nationwide from the current roughly 600 judges to about 800 judges.
But in addition to the 50 judges that the AP estimates have been fired, at least 50 more left through voluntary resignations or early retirements posed to them by those DOGE “Fork in the Road” offers. All this while the immigration courts have a national backlog of nearly four million cases, and these firings are likely to make that backlog even worse.
But that may be the point. In a scene we've seen play out many times recently in the Bay Area, mask-wearing ICE agents will show up at immigration courts and detain people for appearing at their own hearings where they are trying to comply with the law. The Trump administration wants judges to dismiss the immigrants’ cases, because if the case is dismissed, the person can be automatically shipped off for detainment.
Immigration courts are not like normal American criminal courts, in that the defendant does not have the automatic right to an attorney. In many cases, the best a person gets offered is an interpreter, while effectively being forced to defend themselves.
So it’s a system that’s pretty stacked against those seeking citizenship or legal status. And it seems the Trump administration wants to stack it even harder against them, by firing judges, and presumably replacing them with Trumpier hard-liners that will deport as many people as possible.
Image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 06: Federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on August 06, 2025 in New York City. Detentions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continue as people attend immigration court hearings. The agency is eliminating the age cap for new hires to allow people older than 40 to join its force as it continues to carry out the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
