Beyond the Border brings you human stories about the U.S. immigration system through original reporting from journalist Kate Morrissey and curated highlights from reporters across the country. The newsletter is sponsored by Capital & Main.
Kerry Doyle sat in an immigration courtroom observing a fellow judge finish a hearing in an asylum case late on a recent Friday afternoon when she received an email with an attachment titled “terminated.”
Doyle had been a judge for only about two months and was in training to begin hearing cases soon at a recently opened Massachusetts court. Her colleagues helped her pack up her office before the afternoon was over, she said.
“This doesn’t make sense for an administration that is prioritizing removals,” Doyle said, using the legal word for deportation. “You need the judges to hear the cases to order the person removed so that you can then carry out the removal order. It’s a vital part of the system.”
So far, the administration of President Donald Trump has fired 22 immigration judges, including a group that worked as managers of their respective courts, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the union that represents immigration judges. The administration has also fired five senior managers of the immigration court system, the union said.
As part of its efforts to reduce the size of the government workforce, the Trump administration has been firing federal employees on probationary status, meaning that they had recently been hired for their positions. Immigration judges are on probationary status for their first two years, according to the union, except for military veterans who have probationary status for only a year.
When the administration sent federal employees its “Fork in the Road” email calling for voluntary resignations, it was supposed to exclude people who worked in immigration enforcement and national defense and for the Postal Service, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. But the letters went to immigration judges anyway.
“Look up the definition of ‘hypocrisy,’ it’s ‘when someone says one thing but does another.’ The firing of immigration judges when we need more judges to enforce our immigration laws by this administration is a perfect example of hypocrisy,” said Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, in an emailed statement to Beyond the Border.
“This outrageous move to fire immigration judges will only make the backlog of cases worse. This is the opposite of the administration’s stated goals,” Biggs said.
The Trump administration and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which operates the courts, did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Biggs estimated that the fired judges would have held 10,000 hearings this year. The courts currently have a backlog of more than 3.7 million cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which monitors government data on immigration through public records requests.
Days after the firings, immigration Judge Samuel B. Cole, who has been hearing cases in Chicago since 2016 and has served as executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said that he would be stepping down. He declined to say more on the subject at this time.
The firings affected courts across the United States, with California and Texas losing the most, according to the union. Five of the judges were based in Texas with three in Houston, one in Laredo and one in El Paso. Four of the judges were based in California with one in San Diego and three in Concord.
Rhana Ishimoto, the assistant chief immigration judge who managed the downtown San Diego court, disappeared from the immigration court website at the end of last week and was replaced with Anne Kristina Perry, who already served as assistant chief at the Imperial and Otay Mesa courts in Southern California. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Ishimoto was appointed to her position in May 2023 and previously worked as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney representing the government in immigration court cases.
Ishimoto did not respond to a message on social media.
On Wednesday morning, the downtown San Diego court, which operates on the fourth floor of the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building, seemed largely business as usual. People with stacks of documents and plastic folders lined up in the court’s lobby to file paperwork and check in for court hearings.
In one courtroom, Judge Rico Bartolomei, who once served as assistant chief immigration judge in San Diego before stepping down from the managerial role to hear cases full time again, worked his way through a full docket of people from Venezuela, El Salvador, Haiti, Russia and Brazil. Almost all had recently crossed the border, mostly through the now defunct CBP One phone application that allowed people to schedule appointments to request asylum.
Bartolomei greeted each person brightly, almost cooing, “Hi Kaleb!” at a toddler who approached the judge a few strides in front of his parents and older brother.
He carefully explained their rights in court and offered them time to find attorneys. In the case of Kaleb’s parents, whom the government alleged were from Venezuela, he learned that they had moved to Arkansas.
He asked how they had arrived in court that day.
By bus, the family responded.
How long did that take? he asked empathetically.
About 36 hours, the family said.
He moved their case to a court closer to them.
He transferred three of the cases that he heard that morning to the court in Concord, California, which is now short three judges.
Other Stories to Watch
The Trump administration is deporting people from Eastern Hemisphere countries to Panama and Costa Rica. The New York Times managed to speak with a few of the people sent to Panama, despite measures taken to block contact with journalists and lawyers, and reported that everyone interviewed appeared to be an asylum seeker. Many told the reporters that they were Christians fleeing religious persecution. The Defensoría de los Habitantes, or ombudsman, of Costa Rica, delivered a strongly worded report after the first flight arrived in the country and pushed for Costa Rica to uphold the rights of migrants.
The Trump administration has sent Venezuelan migrants to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Though officials initially said everyone held at the U.S. military base was a gang member, more and more reporting is calling that claim into question. Migrant Insider recently told the stories of a Venezuelan barber whose name appeared on a list of detainees published by The New York Times as well as an interior decorator whose family had struggled to locate him. The New York Times reported that military guards watch over at least some of the migrants. While the first group sent to the base has already been deported, except for one person who was returned to U.S. soil, more migrants have since been taken there. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit over access to attorneys for detainees at the base. The Border Chronicle discussed the history of Guantanamo Bay’s use for immigration detention.
Arizona Luminaria reported on the rapid deportation to Mexico of a Venezuelan mother and two of her children. Her other two children are still in Arizona. According to the news outlet, the woman expressed fear of being sent to Mexico, where she had been targeted by a cartel, but officials ignored her. For Voice of San Diego, I spoke with a San Diego woman who said immigration officials left her bruised when they tried to take her from her home while her case is still on appeal.
The Huddled Masses newsletter by The Bulwark looked at the disastrous consequences of Alabama’s 2011 attempt to punish undocumented residents through changes to state law.
CalMatters reported that many families in Salinas, California, are keeping their children home from school due to deportation fears.
Borderless Magazine covered a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration against Chicago, Cook County and Illinois over local laws that limit police interactions with immigration officials. Meanwhile, in California, San Diego Republican state Sen. Brian Jones is trying to keep local jurisdictions from adding any restrictions to police cooperation with immigration officials beyond what state law already requires.
The San Diego Union-Tribune dug into what troops are doing on both sides of the border following Trump’s executive orders and negotiations with Mexico over potential tariffs.
For Prism, I looked at a less-talked-about executive order that pushes the U.S. attorney general to seek the death penalty in any capital case involving an undocumented defendant.
The El Paso Times is following the case of a Customs and Border Protection officer charged with federal counts of human and drug smuggling. According to the outlet, the officer was accused of being a member of Mexican cartel La Linea. That cartel was not on the list of gangs and cartels that the State Department recently published in the Federal Register to label them as terrorist organizations.
Many outlets have covered the drop in border crossings so far this year, including Reuters and the Arizona Daily Star.
After rescinding temporary protected status for Venezuelans, the Trump administration is similarly cutting off that protection for Haitians.
The Trump administration issued a stop work order to organizations that provide legal representation to unaccompanied migrant children in immigration court. That order has since been rescinded. For Voice of San Diego, I wrote about how a similar stop work order and funding freeze is affecting refugee resettlement agencies and the newcomers they support.
