Cadre of immigration court judges fired by Trump DOJ

Donald Trump pledged during his 2024 campaign that if elected, he would waste no time in transforming the federal government and ridding it of individuals standing in the way of his agenda, and he appears to be wasting no time in fulfilling that vow.

As Fox News reports, late last week, over a dozen judges in the immigration court system were relieved of their duties by Attorney General Pam Bondi's Justice Department, a group made up of 13 who were poised to be sworn in and an additional five assistant chief judges.

Immigration judges dismissed

The action against the aforementioned group of judges came in the wake of the firing of two others, with reports suggesting that no reason for the decision was given and no replacements named.

Trump's decision comes at a time when the immigration court system is facing a significant backlog estimated at more than three million pending cases.

Though the cause of the most recent firings was not announced in a Jan. 27 memo issued by Sirce Owen, acting director of the Justice Department, conveyed the belief that the administration of then-President Joe Biden “severely undermined” the values and mission of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).

The memo stated, “An effort to restore those values and to re-establish the EOIR as a model administrative adjudicatory body is well underway” in what was perhaps a hint of the personnel moves yet to come.

“If all employees are willing to join that effort, then there will be no limit to what EOIR can achieve,” the memo added, and whether the dismissed judges were determined to stand in opposition to that agenda is something that remains unclear.

Reactions pour in

The judge's dismissal spurred strong reactions from the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), the union representing them, as NBC News noted.

Matt Biggs, the union's president, declared, “You have a president now who campaigned on immigration and removing people from the country on one hand. And on the other hand, he's actually firing the very judges that have to hear these cases and make those decisions.”

Biggs expressed his confusion at the move, musing, “So, it makes no sense. It's a head scratcher.”

Recently appointed -- and recently fired -- immigration judge Kerry Doyle, who also served as deputy general counsel at the Biden Department of Homeland Security, blasted the dismissals and labeled them to be “political.”

Though Biggs suggested that there is “bipartisan support” for the hiring of additional immigration judges, it could be that the Trump administration is instead prioritizing the hiring of personnel charged with facilitating mass deportations rather than staffing the arguably inefficient immigration courts that have done little in recent years to address the problems caused by four years of Biden's open borders.