Trump Immigration Judges Pushed to Deny Asylum in Swift Training

Top immigration court leaders are telling new judges to refrain from granting migrants asylum in most cases, multiple people familiar with the matter said as the Trump administration carries out its detention and deportation agenda.

Justice Department Board of Immigration Appeals judges and others who assisted with training of three dozen new judges in October told the recruits asylum should be granted only in rare circumstances, according to three people familiar with the training. The new judges included military lawyers tapped to serve six-month appointments.

A second group of judges is completing similar training in Falls Church, Va., this week and scheduled to be sworn in Thursday, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The training includes roughly two weeks of classroom instruction and at least one week observing hearings at their assigned court, the people familiar said. That isn’t extensive enough for judges to achieve an adequate understanding of immigration law before they decide migrants’ fate, former immigration judges said.

“If you’re not having the proper training, and then on top of that you’re in a very short temporary appointment, you’re just being set up for failure,” said Anam Petit, a former immigration judge in Annandale, Va., who was fired in September.

The Trump administration is seeking to replace hundreds of judges who’ve left or been fired while potentially adding hundreds more slots across DOJ’s 73 immigration courts.

Getting what the Trump administration has dubbed “deportation” judges up to speed is a priority as it faces a backlog of approximately 3.2 million cases as of Dec. 31, according to data from Mobile Pathways, a California-based nonprofit that analyzes immigration court data.

The hiring of temporary military lawyers, short training timeline, and emphasis on denials suggest to lawyers and former judges that the recruits are being trained to serve the administration’s goal of increasing deportations as immigration enforcement agents fan out in Minneapolis and other cities across the country.

A DOJ spokesperson defended the training, saying Joe Biden’s administration forced immigration courts to implement “de facto amnesty.”

“This Department of Justice is restoring integrity to our immigration system and encourages talented legal professionals to join in our mission to protect national security and public safety,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

October Training

DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which includes the courts, maintains that new judges undergo a six-week training program, citing a 2022 document that describes a week at the judge’s assigned court, three weeks of classroom training, and an additional two weeks working with a mentor judge to develop a legal resource guide and begin to hear cases under supervision.

That process doesn’t align with the October training, according to one person familiar. The first week, the person said, consisted mostly of onboarding, followed by nine days of classroom training in Falls Church. By the fifth week, new judges were holding their own hearings with another judge present, the person said.

The October training on asylum cases was led by top judges at EOIR, including Board of Immigration Appeals Judge and former acting EOIR Director Sirce Owen, said the people familiar, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Owen led the courts at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term and issued a series of memos pushing judges to quickly adjudicate cases. This included April guidance that judges may deny asylum applications without hearings.

Chief Immigration Judge Teresa Riley also helped lead some of the asylum training, two of the people said. Riley issued guidance in January saying immigration judges weren’t bound by a federal judge’s ruling that noncitizens should get bond hearings.

Federal courts have overwhelmingly rejected this interpretation, defending detainees’ chance at bond or ordering their release.

The training is already having an impact, early analysis suggests. The temporary military judges who joined in October issued relief to migrants at lower rates than other judges in November and December, according to Mobile Pathways data.

‘Nowhere Near Enough Time’

The recruitment of new judges follows the Trump administration’s firing of more than 100 judges across the country, according to estimates from Justice Connection, an organization supporting former and current DOJ employees. Nearly 100 additional judges are estimated to have resigned since the start of Trump’s second term.

The budget reconciliation package signed into law last summer gave DOJ funding to have 800 immigration judges by Nov. 1, 2028, up from the roughly 600 judges currently listed on EOIR’s website.

Those who previously served as immigration judges, who are DOJ employees and not housed within an independent court system, say the weeks of training for new judges isn’t robust enough for them to fully understand and apply federal statute.

“Immigration law is a very complicated area of law, because it evolves so fast,” said David Kim, a former New York-based immigration judge fired in September.

Emmett Soper, who served for years as an immigration judge and as counsel to the EOIR director during the Biden administration, said his training in early 2017 consisted of an initial week observing hearings and two weeks of classroom training, followed by two weeks of observing and conducting hearings at a field court under the supervision of a mentor judge.

“In the past, training has been fairly comprehensive, and non-ideological, and we were not being pushed in any real way toward particular results,” Soper said.

Beyond judges’ initial training, it can take several months to feel comfortable applying immigration law, Petit said.

Military lawyers serving temporary appointments have “nowhere near enough time to be adequately trained and also be able to meaningfully understand the law,” Petit said.

Judges also face the task of adhering to performance metrics EOIR established in September, including completing many cases within 60 days.

Judges are now typically scheduled to hear around four cases per day, up from the roughly three-per-day standard under the Biden administration—though judges in some courts are being assigned closer to six per day, according to one person familiar.