Mass Exodus Immigration Officials can delay millions of deportation

Earlier this month, Kerry Doyle sat in the Boston regional courtroom to observe the routine-one of the thousands of similar process deportation sessions that took place in immigration courts throughout the country every day.

That is the last step before Doyle, 59, will join the ranks of around 700 American immigration judges. He is very much needed – the immigration court system has a deposit of around 3.7 million cases, with more piling up every day.

When the trial took place, Doyle glanced at his email and saw the message in his inbox with an attachment called “Termination.” A few days before he was sworn in one of the busiest immigration courts in the country, Doyle was fired as part of the first wave of Trump’s mass layoffs to reduce the size of government.

“The reality is that you have a truly damaged system, and firing judges is not a way to fix it,” Doyle, an old immigration lawyer who previously led the law office of the Department of Domestic Security, told ABC News in an interview.

Doyle is one of more than 100 immigration officials who have been dismissed or voluntarily left since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, according to Matt Biggs, President of the Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a trade union representing immigration judges.

The latest dismissal and voluntary exit brought total departure to 43 immigration judges and 85 Administrative Staff – Legal Assistant, Employees and Translators – employed by the Immigration Review (EOIR) executive office, an agent who oversees the Immigration Court.

Biggs said that more than half of them went as part of the resignation program suspended by the government, which offers full salaries and benefits until September for every federal employee who agreed to resign on February 6.

Some of those who were dismissed directly, such as Doyle, were part of the new class of judges rented during the Biden government to help reduce the extraordinary pile of cases.

Critics warned that the mass judge’s exodus could damage one of the promises of Trump’s core campaign – to clean up the legal immigration process and deport millions of immigrants who gained access to the country illegally.

“How do you deport people without immigration judges?” Biggs told ABC News. “This is very hypocritical. This is contrary to what he has campaigns. He makes it more difficult to deport people from this country. It doesn’t make sense at all.”

The departure of immigration judges is only one of Trump’s administrative ways has the potential to establish efforts to revive the immigration court system.

The Department of Justice in recent weeks has removed many judges and officials in the executive office for immigration reviews, the office in the DOJ that oversees the Immigration Court. And last week, Acting Director of the Office, Sirce Owen, wrote to colleagues that the Department of Justice had attracted “Many layers of moving restrictions that protected administrative law judges,” which also applies to immigration judges.

Collectively, these steps “will only reduce the ability of the court to review cases in a fast and fair manner,” said Greg Chen of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a non -partisan bar association.

As part of a broader effort to reduce the pile of delayed immigration cases, Biden administration employs more judges and officials in Eoir and opening new courtrooms throughout the country.

Beyond the improvement of the immigration court system, Trump’s administration has also taken steps to make it more difficult for vulnerable immigrants to secure legal representatives, a step that has the potential to cause more burden on the immigration court system.

Last month, DOJ told legal service providers who received federal funds to stop providing legal orientation and other work intended to support immigrants in the Immigration Court. Trump’s administration also briefly stopped funds for organizations that provide pro-Bono legal representatives to migrant children who are not accompanied.

“What we see is a counter -planned counter plan that the new government will deliver which will make the Immigration Court less effective and of course not fair,” Chen said.

Among the permanent judges, some people are worried that administrative extortion will continue. Immigration judges are among those who receive an email from the personnel management office who asked federal employees to give five bullet points that stated what they had achieved during the previous week.

Trump’s administration has not articulated his own plan to reduce the pile of immigration cases.