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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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November 21 was just another day for Jeremiah Johnson, hearing three cases from immigrants seeking to stay in the United States in his courtroom in San Francisco. That was until he heard two of his fellow immigration judges had been fired.
Heading back to his chambers, Johnson logged onto his computer and found an email with the subject line including the word “termination”. Before he could even print the letter from the Department of Justice, he had been locked out of the system.
Appointed under the first Trump administration, Johnson served eight years on the bench, but in one moment on a Friday afternoon, he had lost his job, and the hundreds of immigrants on his docket saw their cases paused.
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“Immigration is much more than judges, it's much more than just my job,” Johnson told Newsweek Thursday. “This is an issue that's extremely important. It's even now, I think, more important regarding even just the rule of law. You see the administration avoiding courts, not following the law, or apparently not following the law.”
Across the country in New York City that same day, Olivia Cassin, a late Obama appointee, received a similar letter, telling her in one short paragraph that the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, had decided to remove her from her position, effective immediately.
“My strong feeling is that judges, the judges who were fired in New York, for example, who I knew very well, were fired for doing their job, for being careful, for affording people due process, a real day in court,” Cassin told Newsweek Friday.
“Every judge who was fired is a real expert in immigration law. Has a very strong background in immigration law, and reputation for fairness and for affording people a day in court.”
Immigration Judges Replaced With Deportation Judges
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Cassin and Johnson were not alone; several other judges also received a similar email from the DOJ, which operates immigration courts across the country. Each of them could have had thousands of cases on their dockets waiting to be heard, as part of a backlog that currently sits at around 3.6 million.
The Department of Justice told Newsweek that individual judges had not been specifically targeted for termination, but that all judges were continuously reviewed and expected to remain impartial.
“After four years of the Biden Administration forcing Immigration Courts to implement a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens, this Department of Justice is restoring integrity to our immigration system and encourages talented legal professionals to join in our mission to protect national security and public safety,” a DOJ spokesperson told Newsweek on Friday.
So, while judges have lost their jobs across the country, the Trump administration is hiring new ones, but branding them “deportation judges” rather than “immigration judges”, in posts on social media and in job descriptions.
“Coincidentally, those ads started, for judges that would be part of the solution of the backlog and the American problem with immigration, the day that I was fired,” Cassin said. “I woke up that morning and looked at my messages, and I saw those ads with a bunch of judges with whom we have a chat.
“People were saying, ‘Could these possibly be real? And why is the Secretary of Homeland Security advertising for jobs at a separate agency, the Department of Justice?’ Then we looked at the Department of Justice and saw the same ads.
“It validates my feeling of the dismissal of experts in immigration law, being replaced by people who are not experts.”
The recruitment campaign has continued in recent weeks, but it is not clear how many individuals have been hired so far, or what training they will receive before taking on the growing caseloads left behind.
Immigrants Are Waiting Longer for Their Day in Court
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty
Johnson told Newsweek that as the number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests has increased, so have the waiting lists for courts. He had already been handed files from another judge recently let go, and was setting hearing dates for June 2029.
“If you don't have judges, you don't have courts. So, what happens to their cases? You have people waiting in legal limbo,” Johnson said. “So, people may decide to just simply leave the United States and not have their case heard at all, although they might have a meritorious case. So, it's this strategy of avoiding immigration courts, [even though] the law is what's saying: this is how you remove someone from the United States.”
Both former judges said that over the years, pressures have ebbed and flowed as detention numbers and White House priorities have changed. During the first Trump administration, judges were set targets for case decisions, under a policy of “no dark courtrooms”, Johnson explained, meaning the work had to continue.
Cassin oversaw cases of unaccompanied minors – the children and teenagers who have come to the U.S. alone, or lost parents along the way, and oftentimes must represent themselves. Every Tuesday, she held hearings for a select few of the 60 to 70 minors on her list, but in recent months, some stopped showing up.
“These kids stopped coming to court entirely because they heard that some of their friends, high school students in New York, were detained and sent back to their countries or detained under terrible conditions,” Cassin said.
“My heart broke, because I wanted these kids to come to court and I wanted to hear their asylum cases, I wanted to adjudicate their other applications for relief, and so many of them didn't come. At a certain point, what a judge has to do, if somebody doesn't come to court, you have to order them deported in absentia.”
Immigration courts, while never easy for immigrants to navigate, have become far more daunting this year under the second Trump administration. More federal agents have appeared in the hallways, while protests have taken place inside and out, including at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, close to Cassin’s courtroom.
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There have been multiple instances of ICE agents detaining immigrants as they left court with deportation orders, while others have been targeted as they visit U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for visa and green card interviews elsewhere in government buildings.
“I have been traumatized by what has happened in the court,” Cassin said. “I would say there was a takeover of our courts, a hostile takeover, of masked ICE agents, threatening figures outside of our courtrooms, lining the hallways.
“I felt uncomfortable from day one. I made my discomfort and fear known to the higher ups. I felt fear going using the restrooms when ICE agents were lining the wall across from the restroom,” she said. “I felt fear just walking in the halls to reach my courtroom.”
Cassin said she was met with indifference and told that if she did not want to experience federal agents in her workplace, she should stick to her courtroom and chambers.
“I have lived in many different countries, visited many countries. I've never physically felt so threatened and unsafe by being there,” Cassin said. “So, you could imagine what it felt like for people who were potentially being detained.”
Johnson told Newsweek that he had seen what the fear was like for detained immigrants, both for the outcome of their cases and potential ongoing ICE detention. At one point, a woman who had been held by ICE entered his courtroom. She would likely have won her claim, the judge said, but before he could begin proceedings, she asked to be deported because she could not take one more day in detention.
“Everyone's always asking [immigrants], what countries did you go to or travel through when you got to America? Panama, Guatemala, they go through them all, and the DHS attorneys like, ‘Well, why didn't you apply for asylum in Mexico? Why didn't you apply for asylum in Costa Rica?” Johnson said.
“That's not America. Around the world, America stands for something. Or it did. But at that time, I shut the door, I turned off the light a little bit, and it was me doing that,” he added. “It was disheartening to see an individual tell me [that]. I saw her loss of that understanding of what America is, and I fear that others may feel that same loss.”
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