LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Since Trump took office, a hundred immigration judges have been fired, quit or resigned. That's out of about 700. One of the most understaffed immigration courts in the country sits just outside Boston. NPR's immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo has the story.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Immigration judges play a key role in determining if someone in the country without legal status should stay or go. For the last several years, the backlog of cases in the courts ballooned to nearly 4 million, and lawyers like Stephanie Marzouk in Boston had clients waiting years for their days in court.
STEPHANIE MARZOUK: When I started practicing, the Boston Immigration Court had very few judges and a huge backlog of cases. I think at some point, there was 70,000 cases waiting for these judges to hear them.
BUSTILLO: Then the Justice Department announced that in spring of 2024, a new court would open in the neighboring town of Chelmsford. The court was intended to have 21 judges, but it's now down to six, as several have been dismissed by the Trump administration or resigned.
MARZOUK: And so when judges started getting fired, it was really a betrayal for a lot of people that they, again, were expecting that they would get to go to court, tell their story and have their case heard, have a decision in their case. And now they're being told to wait for who knows how long. We don't really know what is happening.
BUSTILLO: Immigration lawyers told NPR that their cases at Chelmsford scheduled for this summer are now being pushed as far out as 2029. Many judges, like other civil servants in the executive branch of government, were laid off at the end of their two-year probationary period. Seeing what was happening to his colleagues, Judge George Pappas cleared out his office in advance.
GEORGE PAPPAS: So from that point forward, I worked in a bare room, and it was my way of taking control of that which I could control. It was my silent protest.
BUSTILLO: He was laid off in July, along with 17 other judges nationwide. Sitting in his mostly empty living room, Pappas prepares to head back home to North Carolina. He reflects on the difficulty of the job. Pappas said on his last day, he'd just finished granting asylum in what he described as one of the hardest cases of his tenure.
PAPPAS: So it's quite ironic. I sort of felt like a super nova. I was brightest at the very end, and then the hammer came down and fired me.
BUSTILLO: The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts, said they have job openings available at courts across the country, including Chelmsford. When asked about the loss of judges, EOIR said it will continue to use all of its resources to adjudicate immigration cases, quote, "fairly, expeditiously and uniformly consistent with due process." Congress approved $3 billion to help hire more immigration judges, but recruiting and onboarding can take up to a year. In the meantime, thousands of immigrations are hoping someone will hear their cases as the administration aims to deport more people.
Ximena Bustillo, NPR News, Chemlsford, Massachusetts.
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