The Trump administration is ratcheting up the pressure on immigration courts and judges as it moves toward further constricting the due process available for immigrants.
Court employees and judges at the San Francisco Immigration Court received a short email last week letting them know that their court will be shutting its doors by the end of the year. All personnel will be transferred to the Concord Immigration Court, about 30 miles away, according to the email sent by Teresa Riley, the chief immigration judge, and obtained by NPR.
The court's closure comes as immigration judges spent the last year facing pressure to move through their caseloads faster and streamline deportations.
"At first it was a message that you better fall in line or you're going to get fired," said Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge who worked in San Francisco's court until his termination last year. Now, "it's a message that your court is going to be closed."
San Francisco's immigration court has been among those particularly hit by the Trump administration's push to fire judges. According to a count kept by NPR, 12 judges and a court supervisor received termination notices last year. Several others retired or left, leaving the court with just four immigration judges and one supervisor to hear cases as of the beginning of this year — down from 21 at the start of 2025.
The closure of the court came as a surprise to many current and former employees at the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which is part of the Department of Justice. The employees spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. EOIR spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly says the move to Concord "would be more cost-effective."
The judges who remain in the court this year now face some 120,935 immigration cases, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data as of September. Those cases will be transferred to the court in Concord over the course of the next year, or be heard remotely, Mattingly said.
The Concord court opened in early 2024 specifically to help ease the pressure on the San Francisco court, which was one of the busiest immigration courts in the country, hearing cases from migrants in Portland through California's Central Valley.
Concord's court itself has also shed judges and other employees, and already has a growing backlog of immigration cases.
Firing push nationwide
The situation in California isn't unique. In total, the Trump administration fired nearly 100 judges in 2025, including both newer judges and those with more experience, according to NPR's count cross-referenced with the judges' union and those in several of the individual courts. That number includes assistant chief immigration judges, or courthouse supervisors who also have their own dockets.
The year-end string of layoffs included at least 19 experienced judges who had been with the agency for years, NPR has identified.
The result is that courts across the country are starting 2026 with fewer than half the judges from a year ago as judges were fired, resigned or were reassigned. At least two courts — in Aurora, Colo., and in Oakdale, La., — have no judges left, just the court supervisor.
Those courts haven't closed yet, but observers expect similar moves to shrink the number of immigration courts and adjudication centers in the country, which currently number 76.
With fewer judges and courts to hear them, immigrants are seeing their cases pushed back as far as 2030. Many of these immigrants have already waited years for their chance to make their case before a judge. Lawyers say the delays make their clients more vulnerable to arrests and deportations, as part of the administration's push to broaden the scope of arrests.
Jordan Weiner is an immigration lawyer in San Francisco and the interim executive director of La Raza Centro Legal, a legal and advocacy group. She saw court backlogs grow during the COVID-19 pandemic, and she sees the shutting of San Francisco's court as another "mass delay event."
Weiner has 10 cases in the San Francisco Immigration Court; all have been pushed back due to the termination of judges. One of her clients has been in the U.S. for nearly a decade. That case has already been pushed to 2027 and she anticipates it will be postponed again once it goes to the judges in Concord.
"Of course people are scared to go to immigration court because of the arrests — and closing down San Francisco Immigration Court isn't going to help," Weiner said. "That doesn't give a lot of confidence in the system."
Hiring more judges
EOIR is planning to bring on new classes of immigration judges at least every quarter to make up for those who were fired or left. But it's unclear whether they would fully make up for the shortfalls.
The agency launched a new hiring campaign in November that seeks to recruit "deportation judges" — rather than "immigration judges." The agency did not respond to questions over how many applications it has received in the first few months of the hiring campaign.
Fired judges also worry that the administration's rounds of terminations favors those who had immigration defense experience. This, they said, gives the perception that immigration courts are favoring outcomes in line with President Trump's goal of mass deportations.
"You're weakening the rule of law by not having immigration judges; you're having deportation judges," Johnson, the former immigration judge in San Francisco, said.
Immigration judges typically come from a variety of backgrounds, including immigration enforcement and immigration defense. But of the judges fired between February and October last year, most had experience in immigration defense, an NPR investigation found.
The DOJ also promoted 10 judges to be courthouse supervisors. An NPR analysis of those judge's background and records show eight have prior experience working for the Homeland Security Department.
Temporary military judges brought in
The Trump administration has also moved forward with temporary judge positions. The Pentagon in September authorized up to 600 military lawyers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps, or JAGs, to serve as temporary immigration judges. One class of 25 was already onboarded and a second was expected to begin their training as soon as this week, NPR has learned from two sources not permitted to speak publicly.
These judges are also not exempt from the pressures from this administration to more quickly adjudicate cases and to streamline deportations.
JAG judges currently on the bench issued removal orders at a higher rate than other judges did, according to an analysis of court data by the legal nonprofit Mobile Pathways.
Those who don't comply may already be facing consequences. One JAG judge, Christopher Day, a U.S. Army Reserve lawyer, had granted asylum and relief from immediate deportation at a higher rate than his other JAG counterparts, according to EOIR data compiled by Mobile Pathways.
Day has been removed from his post, per EOIR's website.
EOIR declined to comment on personnel matters.
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