Trump fires immigration judges while adding billions of dollars for ICE

Massachusetts' two U.S. senators are attacking the Trump administration for firing immigration judges in Massachusetts and other parts of the country, claiming the White House appears to be weeding out qualified judges appointed under President Biden.

"Anecdotally, observers noticed a pattern: those who had backgrounds working in immigration enforcement were [kept], while those who previously worked in other parts of government, nonprofits, or private practice were not," wrote Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren in a letter to the head of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the immigration courts.

Immigration judges are appointed by the executive branch, and they get a two-year probationary period before they’re hired permanently. In the letter sent Thursday, the senators said 16 judges reached the end of that period in April, and eight were let go. They said the move was "unprecedented," and demanded answers as to why the decisions were made.

More than half the judges at the state's largest immigration court in Chelmsford were sacked or left on their own, sending shockwaves through the legal community. Robin Nice, an immigration lawyer in Boston, said Biden had appointed a diverse group to the bench.

“Historically that was not the case before this round of appointments,” Nice said. “Most of the judges had been prior government attorneys, working on the prosecution side, or they were in law enforcement.”

Nice represents Marcelo Gomes da Silva, one of the highest profile recent immigration arrests in Massachusetts. The 18-year-old was detained on his way to volleyball practice and held at a controversial Burlington ICE office, and released on bond six days later.

During an interview with WBUR, Nice realized the judge in Gomes’ case — Jenny Beverly — was no longer listed on the website of the immigration court.

“It certainly seems like they are trying to cull any judges who might be at all pro-immigrant, or, I would argue, pro rule-of-law,” she said.

The firings come amid a broader purge of officials who adjudicate matters including asylum and deportation. The National Association of Immigration Judges told WBUR that out of roughly 700 judges across the country, nearly 60 are gone, either by firing or resignation.

The trend could hit Massachusetts hard. Cases here are heard at the JFK federal building in Boston and the new immigration court in Chelmsford. On Feb. 1, the Chelmsford court listed 20 immigration judges on staff. Today, just 10 are listed, and advocates say one of those remaining has resigned and another was transferred.

Nice said the dearth of judges could backfire on the administration. People trying to fight deportation could end up staying in the country much longer, for example, while parents trying to reunite with children could see agonizing delays.

Among the judges fired this year is Kerry Doyle. She was appointed to serve in Chelmsford under Biden, then fired among 11 others just weeks after Trump’s return to office.

Doyle said it’s hard to make sense of it all when the White House is even axing judges with military backgrounds.

“In our group of 12, there were three veterans and at least one of them was a former 25-year JAG attorney,” she said. “And this administration has fired them.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment on the senators’ letter.

“It certainly seems like they are trying to cull any judges who might be at all pro-immigrant, or, I would argue, pro rule-of-law.”

Attorney Robin Nice

But Republicans have long expressed frustration with the immigration courts. The Trump administration has vowed to deport millions of people they say the Biden White House allowed into the country without legal status. And they say the courts allowed hundreds of thousands to stay.

Doyle knows the story from the inside. Before her judicial appointment, she served as principal legal advisor at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, then as Deputy General Counsel under ICE’s parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security. In 2022, Doyle issued a memo directing ICE lawyers to exercise discretion over which cases they pursued, and to prioritize threats to national security, public safety and border security.

In a congressional report last year, Republicans accused the Biden administration of using the immigration courts to allow "nearly 1 million illegal aliens to remain in the U.S. indefinitely."

The report singled out Doyle's memo over its prosecutorial discretion directive.

“In other words, ICE attorneys are expected to ensure that certain aliens’ cases never move forward in immigration court so the Biden-Harris Administration may achieve its open borders agenda,” the report reads.

Before Trump's return to the White House, Doyle stepped down as a DHS legal advisor and became an immigration judge, not expecting Trump would move against Biden's appointments. Now she's back where she started, representing people in immigration court.

Despite the bottleneck in the courts, Doyle insists immigrants have a right to due process, and Congress needs to act to fix the backlogs.

The White House is promising deportations of 1 million people a year, and the president’s massive spending bill adds tens of billions of dollars for enforcement. But with the country's immigration courts sitting on 3.7 million cases, advocates say it’s hard to imagine how that’ll be reduced with fewer judges on the bench.