"Your department is unfairly terminating Trump-appointed immigration judges amid a historic border crisis and rapidly growing immigration case backlog," the 12 Republicans, led by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., write to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Fox News Digital reported last month that several judges selected in the latter days of the Trump administration, and whose two-year probationary periods are now up are being ousted-- with booted judges telling Fox they believe it is because they are out of step with the administration’s immigration views.
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Typically, the vast majority are moved to a non-probationary position. The DOJ did not say how many have recently been let go at the end of their probationary periods. A spokesperson for the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review told Fox News Digital that it does not comment on personnel matters.
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There are 590 sitting immigration judges, and the DOJ said matters related to career civil service employees, who include immigration judges, are established only on performance, and the administration they were hired by has no part in decision-making.
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However, the expulsions of the judges have prompted questions from the immigration judges’ union, and now the Republican lawmakers. The lawmakers said that "it appears to us that your department’s motives are nefarious."
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One judge, Matthew O’Brien, told Fox that appointees have been ousted because of their history as Trump appointees or links to conservative causes, and also due to an opaque complaints system that allowed aggrieved immigration lawyers to rack up complaints against judges they dislike.
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"Some aggrieved attorney who doesn't like the decision that they got in the case that might not have had any merit to begin with can file a complaint complaining about the judge and then nothing happens except harassment of the judge," O'Brien, who had previously worked for the hawkish Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said. "So it requires the judges to write a response … and then it goes into a black hole, and nobody tells anyone anything except the complaining attorneys. So they don't give the judges a written decision on it. They don't talk to the judges and tell them what happened."
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The lawmakers stress the ongoing migrant crisis, and court backlog, as further reasons to raise a concern about the firings.
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"[O’Brien’s] termination comes at a time when the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which operates under your department, is experiencing difficulty hiring and retaining federal immigration judges," they write. "It also comes at a time when the nation’s immigration court backlog is growing faster than ever, with more than 1.5 million cases pending."
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