A veteran immigration judge and former White House official who served under five administrations warns that the nation's immigration courts have lost even the appearance of fairness. The system, already strained by a backlog of more than 3.5 million cases, is now being actively reshaped to prioritize deportation over due process.
The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person on U.S. soil can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without a fair hearing. Last year, the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed that noncitizens have due process rights—but the Trump administration is systematically eroding those protections, and because those rights apply to everyone, the erosion threatens all Americans.
Immigration courts are part of the Justice Department, unlike federal courts where judges operate independently of law enforcement. This structural flaw leaves judges vulnerable to political pressure. Historically, they maintained some independence, but the current administration has stripped that away through a three-pronged assault.
First, the Justice Department issued directives aligning immigration courts with Homeland Security's mass deportation agenda. ICE is now allowed to arrest immigrants at courthouses, and judges are urged to dismiss cases in ways that facilitate those arrests. The result: a 600 percent surge in judges terminating proceedings before resolution. As one former judge put it, this is like letting the pitcher call his own balls and strikes—with life-or-death consequences.
Second, the Board of Immigration Appeals, the internal appellate body, has abandoned independent review. Since January, it has issued over 120 precedent decisions—more than triple the monthly average of the past decade—and all but one procedural ruling went against the immigrant. The board also issued a rule allowing most cases to be dismissed without consideration, leaving immigrants vulnerable to immediate arrest and deportation. A federal district court blocked key parts of that rule, but the government has appealed.
Third, the Justice Department fired at least 113 career immigration judges and replaced them with so-called 'deportation judges'—a title that signals predetermined outcomes. Active-duty military lawyers with no immigration experience are being temporarily assigned. The message is clear: speed up deportations or lose your job. By May, judges were denying nearly 94 percent of asylum applications, a historic high.
Immigrants must pay $1,030 to appeal to the board—an 800 percent increase from 2025—even though relief is vanishingly rare. Those who manage to appeal often face a board that rubber-stamps enforcement actions. In one case, after ICE ignored a legal order protecting a Salvadoran man from deportation, the board issued a ruling limiting judges' ability to grant such protections in the future.
Congress must remove immigration courts from the Justice Department to insulate judges from political interference. Until then, the administration should stop firing judges without cause, reinstate those terminated, and let judges apply the law impartially. The fundamental due process rights that protect everyone on U.S. soil from government abuse are being undermined before our eyes.
Recent developments, such as the citizenship debate and death of Lorenzo Salgado, highlight the human cost of these failures. Meanwhile, Chief Justice Kagan and Justice Barrett have requested $9.7 billion for federal courts, underscoring the contrast with immigration courts' underfunding and political interference.
