Mass Exodus of Immigration Officials Could Delay Millions of Deportations

Earlier this month, Kerry Doyle sat in a Boston-area courtroom to observe a routine deportation hearing — one of thousands of similar proceedings that take place in immigration courts across the country each day.

It was the final step before Doyle, 59, would herself join the ranks of America’s roughly 700 immigration judges. She was badly needed — the immigration court system has a backlog of some 3.7 million cases, with more piling up each day.

As the hearing got underway, Doyle glanced down at her email and spotted a message in her inbox with an attachment called “Termination.” Days before she was to be sworn in at one of the busiest immigration courts in the country, Doyle was fired as part of the Trump’s administration’s first wave of mass layoffs to reduce the size of government.

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Doyle is one of more than 100 immigration officials who have either been dismissed or voluntarily departed since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to Matt Biggs, the president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a union that represents immigration judges.

The latest dismissals and voluntary exits bring the total sum of departures to 43 immigration judges and 85 administrative staff — legal assistants, clerks and translators — employed by the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency that oversees immigration courts.

Biggs said that more than half of those are leaving as part of the administration’s deferred resignation program, which offered full pay and benefits until September for any federal employee who agreed to resign by Feb. 6.

Several of those who were dismissed outright, like Doyle, were part of a new class of judges hired during the Biden administration to help mitigate the overwhelming backlog of cases.

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“How do you deport people without immigration judges?” Biggs told ABC News. {snip}

The departure of immigration judges is just one way the Trump administration has potentially set back efforts to reinvigorate the immigration court system.

The Justice Department has in recent weeks removed multiple judges and officials within the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the office within DOJ that oversees the immigration courts. {snip}

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