President Donald Trump's Justice Department has fired as many as 70 immigration judges since his new administration began in January, Breitbart reported. While estimates differ, this comes as Trump is attempting to narrow protections for asylum-seekers left over from then-President Joe Biden.
The Justice Department said that the firings have occurred for fewer than 55 judges, but that hasn't stopped the left from decrying the move. The government agency further noted that the decision on which judges have to go is not a political one.
"DOJ doesn’t ‘target’ or ‘prioritize’ immigration judges for any personnel decision one way or the other based on prior experience. DOJ continually evaluates all immigration judges, regardless of background, on factors such as conduct, impartiality/bias, adherence to the law, productivity/performance, and professionalism," a spokesperson for the DOJ said.
"Pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, IJs (Immigration Judges) are inferior officers who are appointed and removed by the Attorney General," the spokesperson added. This means that the cuts came come if there are performance problems or there is less need for judges, and fewer immigrants gaining entry under asylum could have something to do with it.
The focus of immigration courts has shifted from asylum-seeking to deportations, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. "But the way the Trump administration is approaching immigration courts reflects a really high prioritization of immigration enforcement and [the administration] has really made deportations this whole-of-government effort," Bush-Joseph said.
Meanwhile, Trump is cracking down on asylum claims and expediting the process for those in the system to close the loophole for as many as 10 million illegal immigrants who claimed asylum under Biden. Instead, they're being sent home, and the 1.1 million who have pending asylum claims will see their pleas denied.
Because they're eliminating asylum and conducting raids on illegal immigrants, the number of newcomers is expected to shrink considerably as others are simply turned away at the border. "Between explicit policy changes and implicit threats to get in line or get fired, [asylum] judges on the whole seem to be following [Trump] orders to deny, deny, deny," researcher Austin Kocher wrote.
"This is not an accident—this is a policy decision," he added. Indeed, it is.
According to the BBC, Trump has severely limited asylum claims, which were liberally permitted under Biden. Just about anyone from a nation whose economic or political condition was worse than that of the U.S., which encompasses most of the world, was given asylum under the previous regime. Trump has changed that, and of course, some are crying racism.
The Trump administration has reduced the number of refugees from 125,000 under Biden to approximately 7,500, which is expected to be the number admitted for the year. The BBC is particularly upset that the priority will go to white South Africans, which is surely an attempt to claim this is a white supremacist policy.
However, the administration said that the new criteria require the refugee status to be "justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest." This seems to track with broader immigraiton decisions based on what Trump has said about the Afrikaners, who are descendants of French and Dutch settlers, and the way they're being starved out of South Africa.
During a White House meeting in February with South Africa's ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, Trump showed the video of the situation there for the white farmers and the danger posed by their own government. Some have called it a "dog whistle," including the ambassador, but the truth is that they are being targeted in their own country and should be eligible to receive help.
There is no reason to admit so many refugees into the U.S. every year when the system is already stretched so thin. It's noble to help the less fortunate, but the policies initiated under Biden have inexplicably admitted more people than the nation can handle, and Trump is doing all he can to roll back those measures.
