The Justice Department has dismissed a sixth San Francisco immigration judge since former President Donald Trump returned to office,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
continuing what experts say is a pattern of removing judges with high asylum approval rates or backgrounds in immigrant advocacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Judge Shira Levine, appointed in 2021, was terminated without explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt did not come as a complete surprise,\u201d said Milli Atkinson of the Bar Association of San Francisco. Five other judges\u2014including Chloe Dillon and Elisa Brasil\u2014were also recently removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the dismissed judges had asylum approval rates far above the national average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Levine approved 97% of cases; Dillon, 96.5%. The national rate has dropped below 36%, according to TRAC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dillon described learning of her dismissal via a three-sentence email, just after wrapping up a multi-year asylum hearing. \u201cThey are specifically targeting one end of the spectrum because they don\u2019t like those results,\u201d she told KQED.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former immigration judge Dana Leigh Marks said the firings appear \u201ccompletely ideologically based.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She added, \u201cIt appears to be very results-oriented, targeted towards individuals who think more independently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All six dismissed judges had experience in public interest or immigrant defense. In contrast, those who came up through DHS or ICE have mostly remained in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In August, the Justice Department eliminated the requirement that immigration judges have prior experience in immigration law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One week later, 600 military lawyers were authorized to serve in these roles\u2014raising alarms about judicial independence and fairness in asylum hearings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sixth Immigration Judge Fired Amid DOJ Pattern The Justice Department has dismissed a sixth San Francisco immigration judge since former President Donald Trump returned to office, continuing what experts say is a pattern of removing judges with high asylum approval rates or backgrounds in immigrant advocacy. Judge Shira Levine, appointed in 2021, was terminated without…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4974,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973\/revisions\/4974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}