"At first it was a message that you better fall in line or you're going to get fired," said Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge who worked in San Francisco's court until his termination last year. Now, "it's a message that your court is going to be closed."
The UK's asylum system is affected by inefficiencies, "wasted public funds" and a succession of "short-term, reactive" government policies that have moved problems elsewhere, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said. As part of its analysis, the spending watchdog looked at a sample of 5,000 asylum claims lodged almost three years ago, in January 2023. Since then, 35% (1,619) of those asylum seekers had been given some sort of protection such as refugee status, and 9% (452) had been removed from the country.
As part of its aggressive immigration policy, the Trump administration has moved fast to increase the rate of arrests of undocumented immigration, and scale up detention space and deportations. But the rapid pace of arrests has contributed to the millions of cases backlogged at the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review, which houses immigration courts. At the same time, in the last nine months, EOIR has lost over 100 judges to firings and voluntary resignations, down from about 700 judges at the start of the year.
