Overview
- More than a dozen current and former immigration judges, in reports published Thursday, said they were pressed to order faster deportations and faced threats of discipline or removal if they refused.
- Over 100 judges were fired or pushed out, and the administration installed many replacements from DHS and the military, which it could do because immigration courts sit inside the Justice Department rather than the federal judiciary.
- Asylum approvals plunged as staffing changed, with new appointees granting roughly 6 percent of cases compared with about 46 percent among judges who were removed, and deportation orders rose.
- Internal directives told judges to grant prosecutors’ motions to dismiss cases and to deny bond to people who crossed the border illegally, steps that made arrests and removals easier and kept more people in detention.
- Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton acknowledged his office wrongly defended an ICE memo on courthouse arrests, as agents detained people after hearings and sent some from New York to Texas and Louisiana for months.