Trump administration 'dismantled' US immigration courts, lawyers group says

McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) -- The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) says the Trump administration is pressuring immigration judges to quickly dismiss cases so that migrants can be arrested by ICE, and is urging courts to deny bond to those who come before them forcing more into detention facilities.

In a call with reporters on Thursday, AILA Executive Director Ben Johnson said due process within the immigration court system under the Trump administration is being threatened in what he calls "an alarming campaign unfolding inside the immigration courts around the country."

"What we've been witnessing is a deliberate effort to dismantle the integrity of the immigration court system, and through the use of coercion, intimidation and the unfounded legal interpretations, to turn the immigration courts into an extension of the Administration's mass deportation machine," Johnson said.

Johnson and others said the reduction of 100 U.S. immigration judges -- who were otherwise fired, retired or voluntarily resigned -- is a direct reflection of the pressures put upon them to act on the bench in ways that the current administration wants.

"All of the alarms that we were ringing we are at that moment," said former U.S. immigration judge Ashley Tabaddor, who also was president of the National Association of Immigration Judges during the first Trump administration.

"I spent a career working to uphold the integrity of our legal institutions, and I'm really, really disheartened to see what we have come to now," she said.

Tabaddor said the way that the U.S. immigration court system is set up -- by having immigration courts under the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) -- has always threatened judge's autonomy because they work under a law enforcement agency. But she says until the past six months, immigration judges were allowed to follow standard court procedures to ensure fair process, such as requiring a written motion to dismiss a case and allowing about 10 days for the other side to respond.

However, judges are now being instructed to grant Immigration and Customs Enforcement motions to dismiss cases immediately and that has resulted in many immigrants arrested just outside the very courtrooms where they thought they were winning their cases.

"Immigration judges are now being told that they serve at the pleasure of the Attorney General and the president. I cannot underscore what a monumental change this is to the very fabric of the immigration court system. This is exactly what we've been ringing the bell on for years and years. This directly undermines the independent decision making authority of the immigration judges, the expectation of what the public has. And it places the immigration judge in the impossible position of choosing between upholding the rule of law and safeguarding their livelihood," Tabaddor said.

Jeremy McKinney, an immigration lawyer from North Carolina and former president of AILA from 2022 to 2023, called it the most aggressive effort in his career to turn immigration courts into an extension of ICE.

McKinney says most troubling recently is the announcement by the Department of Homeland Security that bond will no longer be given to those who crossed into the United States illegally. That means they will go into detention facilities "no matter how long ago, no matter how deep their ties," he said.

Judges are being pressured to rule that most undocumented immigrants who appear before the court must be detained, even if they’ve lived here for decades, raised families, paid taxes, and pose no threat, AILA says.

In a July 8 memo, Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, instructed officers to detain immigrants who entered the U.S. unlawfully "for the duration of their removal proceedings," which can last months or even years, The Washington Post reported.

"Congress gave immigration judges the statutory authority to redetermine bond," McKinney said. "DHS is trying to erase that authority by memo and motion. If EOIR lets them do it, every ICE officer becomes judge, jury and jailer. That is executive overreach, pure and simple, and it shreds due process protections for millions of longtime residents."

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.