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Trump fires top immigration court officials

On his first day, the Republican dismissed the four women who oversaw a system that must resolve 3.5 million cases

Donald Trump signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday.
Donald Trump signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday.Carlos Barria (REUTERS)
Luis Pablo Beauregard

Donald Trump is seeking to rapidly transform the U.S. immigration system. On the day of his inauguration, the president removed the four officials at the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is responsible for overseeing the 71 federal immigration courts, a system that faces a backlog of 3.5 million pending cases. This action follows the signing of a dozen measures on his first day in the White House, which drastically restrict migrants’ access to the U.S., whether they are undocumented or legal refugees.

Sources from the new Justice Department confirmed to the U.S. media the dismissal of the judges, which was communicated to the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the first hours of the incoming government. The dismissed officials are Chief Immigration Judge Sheila McNulty, Acting Director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review Mary Cheng, General Counsel Jill Anderson, and Head of Policy Lauren Alder Reid. All of them had extensive experience and had served presidents of both parties in the system of specialized courts created in 1983, which depends on the executive and not the judiciary.

Trump appointed Judge Sirce Owen as acting chief, replacing McNulty, who had led the agency since 2023 after nearly seven years in a senior position. Under the Biden administration, McNulty presided over the immigration appeals circuit. Owen, by contrast, served during Trump’s first term as the chief legal adviser to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for locating, detaining and deporting migrants.

McNulty was on the “bureaucrat watch list” compiled by the Heritage Foundation, an influential ultraconservative think tank that drafted Project 2025, a blueprint for hard-line policies to guide a new Republican administration. The judge, along with other officials at the Department of Homeland Security, was criticized by the group for taking a more humanitarian view of immigration.

The Heritage Foundation also questioned McNulty for silencing immigration judges, preventing them from speaking out about the backlog of case closings. During the Biden administration, the surge in migrant arrivals exacerbated the caseload, rising from 1.2 million pending cases in 2020 to 3.5 million in 2024. To meet this demand, 220 new judges were hired in four years.

The immigration court system is key to deciding whether an immigrant who has violated immigration laws can remain in the United States or should be deported. Most decisions by the 735 judges in the court system favor deportation, although the process can drag on for years.

Judges also evaluate thousands of asylum applications and oversee “credible fear” interviews, where applicants must demonstrate to an immigration authority that they face a real risk of persecution or torture if returned to their home countries.

Experts interpret these dismissals as a clear sign that Trump intends to quickly reform the system and tighten immigration policy to stem the flow of migrants. The Republican inherited from Biden the lowest figures of illegal crossings in three years.

The dismissal of immigration court officials is part of the broader tightening of security at the southern border. Among the executive orders signed by Trump is the suspension of asylum procedures, though the decree allows for the possibility of resuming them in the coming months. However, this seems unlikely given other measures, such as closing the U.S.-Mexico border for asylum seekers, the deployment of U.S. troops to key strategic locations, and the threat to ban entry for citizens from countries Trump deems part of an “invasion.”

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