Crime & Law
Former Chicago Immigration Judges Discuss Trump Administration Firings
In the past week, 17 immigration court judges across the country have been abruptly fired by President Donald Trump’s administration — including in Chicago.
According to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the union that represents them, some 50 immigration court judges had already been terminated in the past six months before the latest round of firings.
The union said the firings are “without cause” and “against the public interest.”
Jennifer Peyton was the assistant chief immigration judge for Chicago’s immigration court until she was fired by email earlier this month over the Fourth of July weekend while vacationing with her family.
Peyton, who first became an immigration judge in 2016, began to have concerns about the approach the new administration was taking “when four of our senior leadership in the Executive Office for Immigration Review were fired within hours of the inauguration.”
All were women.
“Once that happened everyone kind of braced themselves in the courts,” said Peyton. “Over the course of the next several months, more groups of judges were fired, including seven at my level. … So it’s just been a complete decimation of leadership through terminations that were without cause and also through reassignments of other senior staffers.”
Peyton said it was when she learned that a good friend had been reassigned to the attorney general’s task force on sanctuary cities that her “heart dropped.”
While she had anticipated a change of approach from the Trump administration, “at that moment I realized this was a bigger and more intense change than anyone anticipated,” said Peyton.
She is in the dark over why she was fired.
“I will probably never know why I was terminated, but I know it was not about my performance,” said Peyton. “I had outstanding performance reviews.”
Immigration courts had already seen a “dramatic drop-off” in people attending hearings compared to the last months of the Biden administration as many migrants became wary of being detained as the Trump administration ramped up deportation efforts, Peyton said. She noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents had conducted arrests on the floor where Chicago’s immigration courts are housed.
Carla Espinoza was fired as an immigration court judge without notice last Friday.
“I was on the bench when I found out,” said Espinoza. “I was in the course of rendering an oral decision in a case, so I was doing my job until the very last moment, and so of course it was shocking to find out in that way, particularly when I was doing a job that I understood to be efficient and fair.”
Espinoza was what is called a term appointment. Barring poor performance or other issues, most term appointment immigration judges are made permanent after two years.
Espinoza emphasized that her performance was widely praised.
“We hear the ideal judge should adjudicate approximately 700 cases a year,” said Espinoza. “My first fiscal year I adjudicated over 1,000 cases. I was praised by government attorneys, the private bar. I had (positive) reviews from my chief judge. … So it was not a performance issue.”
The fact that there was no stated reason for her termination “made it even more difficult,” said Espinoza.
Kristi Nelson became an immigration judge in 2023. In April she chose to resign after becoming increasingly disillusioned by what was becoming a toxic work environment.
“Not because of my colleagues in Chicago, but just because of the messaging that we were getting from the top and the constant barrage of emails and memos about federal workers being lazy or not coming to work,” said Nelson. “It just became an environment that I did not want to work in anymore.”
“I also just did not want to be a part of the changes that were coming in the way so-called ‘justice’ was being administered,” said Nelson.
Espinoza said the decision to terminate so many immigration judges is inconsistent and could not be reconciled with a desire to have a well-functioning immigration system.
“If you want to be efficient and you want to make immigration a priority, what would be consistent is to have efficient immigration judges hearing cases,” said Espinoza.
According to Nelson, undermining immigration courts is consistent with the administration’s desire for a swifter removal process often without due process.
“I think the administration using expedited removal — they’re just trying to bypass the immigration courts,” said Nelson. “Once a respondent appears in immigration court the judges are very concerned about making sure that their due process rights are afforded. … But by the administration using expedited removal it’s just bypassing the immigration courts, and my concern is that it results in violations of due process.”
Nelson also worried that prosecutorial discretion was being stripped away.
“Once the new administration took over it seemed like the level of prosecutorial discretion was diminished immensely and it made everybody’s job harder,” said Nelson.
While the Trump administration’s recently passed tax cut and spending bill included a huge increase in funding for ICE — there was not a commensurate increase in funding for immigration courts.
“It just shows what the values are in that new bill,” said Peyton.
