Trump Administration Fires 20 Immigration Judges

The Justice Department wasn’t immune to the downsizing of the federal workforce under President Trump. According to the Associated Press, The Trump administration dismissed 20 immigration judges on Friday without explanation, as it continues its efforts to reduce the size of the federal government. It was unclear if they would be replaced or if this move was permanent.

The administration fired 13 judges who hadn’t been sworn in yet, and five assistant chief immigration judges, said Matthew Biggs, President of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a union representing immigration judges.

“You have a president now who campaigned on immigration and removing people from the country on the one hand. And on the other hand, he’s actually firing the very judges that have to hear these cases and make those decisions. So, it makes no sense. It’s a head-scratcher,” Biggs said in a statement, as reported by NBC News.

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the administration has fired four managers in the Executive Office of Immigration Review as well as a fifth senior manager, the union said. The officials were Sheila McNulty, the chief immigration judge; Mary Cheng, the acting director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review; Jill Anderson, the office’s general counsel; and Lauren Alder Reid, its head of policy.

During the Biden administration, The Justice Department employed more than 700 immigration judges.

The decision to fire the immigration judges risks adding to a case backlog that reached record levels during each of the last three years, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Last year alone, more than 1.8 million new cases were filed, according to the CRS. The new cases boosted the total immigration case backlog to 3.6 million despite an effort by the Biden administration to hire more immigration judges and decrease processing times.

“There’s bipartisan support across the board to actually hire more immigration judges. I mean, there’s a backlog of almost 4 million cases as it is, so this administration, with these firings, they’ve been very successful in increasing the backlog,” Biggs said.

Instead, the Trump administration has focused efforts on hiring staff from several federal agencies to aid in mass deportations. Including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to aid ICE in making immigration arrests.

“While there is this mass deportation effort in name, there is no resource change to the agencies that are involved,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “ICE is operating under the same budget that it had on January 19, 2025.

A memo released by Homeland Security has tasked the Internal Revenue Service with targeting businesses believed to be hiring immigrants who are working illegally while in the U.S. and also investigate human trafficking networks.  Criminal investigators at the IRS also work to expose money-laundering, corruption and drug-trafficking.