SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
In 2025, the Trump administration fired nearly 100 immigration judges, according to an independent tally kept by NPR. And this week, employees at the San Francisco Immigration Court got an email telling them their doors would soon be closing. NPR's immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo joins us. Ximena, thanks so much for being with us.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
SIMON: What do we know about the situation in San Francisco?
BUSTILLO: The court has shrunk to a quarter of its size over the past year. It now has five judges, counting the supervisor. This is one of the courts the Trump administration has most restructured in the last year. According to our account, 12 judges were fired from the San Francisco Court last year. Other judges retired or have resigned. Some of these judges who were fired were newer, in their two-year probationary period of federal government work, but several were tenured and had worked as immigration judges for years.
Earlier this week, court personnel received a short email letting them know that the building's lease was not being renewed and will close by January 2027. The Justice Department told me that they have determined that this was cost-effective for them. The court has 120,000 immigration cases there as of September.
SIMON: Which is a lot. What happens to those cases?
BUSTILLO: The cases and any remaining employees are expected to be transferred to the Concord Immigration Court, about 30 miles away. But one thing here is that Concord opened just two years ago, and the point of that court was to help San Francisco. San Francisco was considered one of the busiest immigration courts in the country, hearing cases even as far out as Oregon and throughout Northern California.
SIMON: Does this seem to help the Trump administration's goal of streamlining deportations?
BUSTILLO: Last year, the Trump administration expanded the scope of who could be both detained and deported quickly. Immigration lawyers told me their clients are now facing this risk, when normally, they'd be protected from detention while their cases are pending. Having fewer courts doesn't necessarily mean people will be greenlit for faster deportations, but it might mean the backlogs grow, and more people are at risk while in legal limbo.
SIMON: And this is hardly the only change we're seeing in immigration courts this year, right?
BUSTILLO: Right. The other thing that we're seeing is a push to militarize the immigration court system and depicting it as a place of punishment. The DOJ's own hiring campaign calls these positions deportation judges, not immigration judges. And the DOJ is expected to bring on more military lawyers as temporary immigration judges this month. Immigrant advocates tell me that this at least gives the perception that the goal of these judges is to deport, as opposed to weighing a case on its merits and seeing if someone deserves relief from deportation.
SIMON: And, Ximena, based on your reporting, what other changes might we expect?
BUSTILLO: There's expected to be a new cohort of military lawyers beginning their training just this month to be used as temporary immigration judges, though it's unclear where exactly they will be working. But it seems that the Trump administration will continue their newer trend of firing judges who have immigration judge experience. The immigration courts say that they're expecting to bring on new classes of immigration judges at least every quarter, so there will be questions about who they're bringing on and how they're being trained.
SIMON: NPR's immigration policy correspondent, Ximena Bustillo. Thanks so much.
BUSTILLO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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