Large-scale immigration raids across Southern California have dominated the public’s view of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation efforts, but the heart of the ongoing overhaul of the immigration system lies in the little-known and often-misunderstood immigration court process.
The apparent targeting and firing of immigration court judges nationwide, seemingly over rulings that go against the administration’s deportation priorities, have drawn widespread news coverage in recent days and shined an intense spotlight on the role of the immigration courts.
They are a far cry from traditional U.S. District courtrooms, which are presided over by politically appointed judges subject to Senate confirmation and protected by a lifetime tenure, and who handle an extremely wide range of federal and civil cases — from complicated criminal conspiracies and terrorist plots to labyrinthine business disputes and complex frauds.
Ultimately, immigration court cases are civil hearings. Which means all the due process protections afforded to defendants in criminal courts do not necessarily apply to non-citizens facing deportation.
While the rare immigration court case can garner headlines — most recently locally the efforts to deport Narciso Barranco, the 49-year-old Tustin father of three U.S Marines — the vast majority of immigration cases occur in obscurity.
And unlike the far more high-profile and publicly accessible criminal hearings in ornate federal courtrooms, immigration court hearings take place largely outside of the public view, in non-remarkable settings, presided over by judges who are not part of the country’s sprawling judicial branch but instead responsible for running a far more specialized and administrative process.
Biggest misconception
The comparison to traditional criminal courts is the biggest misconception that many have about the immigration courts, said Brynna Bolt, a managing attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
Along with immigration court judges, members of the Board of Immigration appeals — the appellate component of the immigration courts — are also part of the executive — rather than the judicial — branch of the federal government.
“They are administrative bodies within the Department of Justice,” Bolt said. “They are not given lifetime appointments. They are subject to hiring and firing by the executive branch. This obviously makes them extremely susceptible to pressure from the executive branch.”
Administration officials have described the deportation push — including the changes to the immigration courts — as a much-needed overhaul necessitated by a troubled deportation system. White House officials late last month declared that the “Era of Amnesty Is Over…
“Since President Donald J. Trump returned to office, the United States has launched the most aggressive and successful immigration enforcement overhaul in modern history — and that extends to immigration courts,” the White House statement read. “After four years of Biden-era chaos turned immigration courts into de facto amnesty factories for unvetted illegals, the Trump Administration is remaking the broken system.”
But the ongoing push by the administration for faster deportations, paired with the increase in detention for those awaiting immigration decisions and the fact that they are not guaranteed an attorney, has significantly increased the pressure on those involved in the immigration courts.
The risk, those critical of the current state of the immigration courts say, is a system where attempts to make the system more efficient may come at the expense of fairness, particularly given the life-altering decisions that are on the line.
“The immigration laws are incredibly complex, and the system is kind of geared toward removing people,” Bolt said. The burden non-citizens need to meet in immigration court is very high. You pair that with the fact that more people are being detained and judges are being asked to make decisions more quickly. People (non-citizens) are being pressured to move their cases forward without an attorney because they are tired of being in detention.”
Judges as government employees
Immigrants in the midst of immigration court hearings have a right to an attorney. But, unlike criminal trials, the government is rarely required to provide one. Immigrants must find — and pay — their own attorneys. Or represent themselves. That includes children.
Filling a role somewhat akin to prosecutors are attorneys with the Department of Homeland Security, who represent the government. They are employees of the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division under the umbrella of DHS. The head of the office is a political appointee, though the actual attorneys are meant to be nonpolitical hires.
Immigration judges are also literal government employees in the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the Department of Justice and ultimately under the command of the president. The immigration judges under federal regulations are authorized to exercise their own independent judgment.
But the immigration judges are also subject to pressure from political appointees hoping to deport more people and can be fired if they aren’t seen as sufficiently supportive of the administration’s enforcement agenda.
Existing struggles to manage the number of immigration cases have intensified in the face of increased enforcement, studies have found.
“Immigration judge staffing at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review has long been insufficient to adjudicate its pending caseload and keep up with the receipt of new immigration cases, particularly removal proceedings, contributing to large backlogs in the immigration court system,” Congressional Research Service staff wrote in a report released in early March. “These backlogs have been exacerbated by record-high case receipts in recent years.”
Pressure from the administration
In recent weeks, high-profile decisions in closely-watched, controversial immigration court cases appear to have led to the firing of immigration court judges, for instance, who seemingly ruled against the wishes of the current administration.
Some of the judges who have been fired or pushed out have spoken out publicly, indicating that the administration appears to often target those perceived as relatively pro-immigrant. Bolt said she is unaware of immigration judges being fired locally for specific rulings, but noted that in general judges have been pressured to hold hearings on an expedited timeline.
“It is not always clear why cases are a priority, and asking judges to have a decision by a certain time incentivizes them to cut corners,” Bolt said. “What is suffering is due process.”
While they may not come close to matching the size or scope of the larger federal court system, the immigration courts currently have more than 3.5 million cases, according to studies. The primary procedure for determining whether or not immigrants can remain in the country is a removal hearing.
On their surface, removal hearings can look like bench trials, where a judge — not a jury — hears evidence and renders a verdict. But since they are civil — rather than criminal — proceedings, immigrants don’t have the same rights as criminal defendants. And the hearings are often very short, concluding in as little as two to three hours.
Expedited removal
Most immigrants in the country are entitled to a removal hearing. But their due process guarantees are far less than those of defendants in traditional criminal courts.
DHS has increasingly relied on an alternative process called “expedited removal,” which calls for an interview with an immigration officer who has the power to expedite a removal order within hours or days.
During removal proceedings, an immigration judge must determine whether an immigrant is removable under the law. The immigrant, or their lawyer, can challenge the government’s allegations. They can also argue a legitimate fear of persecution if returned to their home country, which would make them eligible for asylum.
If an immigrant entered the country with a visa or as a refugee, the burden of proof is on the government to prove they should be removed from the country. But if an immigrant entered the country without coming into contact with an immigration officer — for instance, by crossing the border between official points of entry — the burden is on them to prove they should remain.
The United States Supreme Court has affirmed that immigrants in the country have a right to due process.
But exactly what that due process entails — including what constitutes a full and fair hearing — has been the subject of much debate — and related litigation — in the lower courts.
Shaping the courts
In practice, administration officials have tremendous power to shape the immigration courts.
Immigration judges for decades granted bonds to immigrants in detention who they determined were not a threat to public safety, allowing those facing deportation to live in the community until their cases were decided, often for years.
Last year, the Trump administration moved to make those who had crossed the border unlawfully ineligible for bond, meaning they remain in custody for the duration of their legal proceedings. Immigrants rights groups have accused the administration of trying to induce immigrants to leave the country voluntarily by keeping them locked up away from family, friends and their jobs.
A recent NY Times investigation found that the Trump administration has dismissed more than 100 immigration judges out of about 750 who were in place when Trump returned to the Oval Office. At the same time, the NY Times found, 143 permanent or temporary judges — many of whom previously worked as immigration prosecutors for the DOJ or as military lawyers — have been appointed to the immigration courts.
The number of people being ordered deported has risen sharply, with courts in 2025 issuing nearly 500,000 removal orders, a 57% increase over the previous year.
At the same time, the percentage of approved asylum claims has plummeted, and is now granted in only 7% of cases.
According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an online organization that tracks immigration data, “relatively few immigrants face deportation based on alleged criminal activity.” In February, for example, the organization found that alleged criminal activity was cited in just 2% of the “notices to appear” in immigration court that were sent out by the government.
“These results add to the growing body of evidence that despite the current Trump administration’s rhetoric about targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’ its deportation enforcement is increasingly focused on noncitizens without criminal records,” read a TRAC report released in early April.
An aggressive overhaul
The Trump administration has openly celebrated the immigration court changes.
White House press staff contends that, under Trump, the country has “launched the most aggressive and successful immigration enforcement overhaul in modern history” while “remaking the broken system.”
“President Trump took decisive action, replacing activist judges — who slow-walked deportations and granted asylum at sky-high rates — with professionals committed to enforcing the law, not undermining it,” the White House release read. “No more activist judges shielding criminal illegals. No more endless delays. Only results.”
The recent deportation case involving Barranco, the Tustin father, was the rare immigration court case to enter the public consciousness. Barranco was working as a landscaper in Santa Ana when he was approached by immigration agents, struck in the head several times and detained. The government accused him of swinging a weed whacker at agents, but officials have provided no evidence. His case was dismissed by an immigration court judge, though the Department of Homeland Security is appealing that decision.
Nationally, two immigration court judges — Roopal Patel and Nina Froes — were fired last month by the Trump administration after dismissing high-profile deportation cases against Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi, international students who had advocated on behalf of Palestinians, according to the New York Times and other news outlets.
Ozturk and Mahdawi were detained last year amid a string of arrests of international students who had either publicly supported Palestinian causes or taken part in protests on college campuses that the Trump administration contends were antisemitic.
Civil liberties groups countered that the arrests were aimed at stifling free speech, and the firing of the immigration court judges who ruled in Ozturk and Mahdawi’s favor was viewed by many court watchers as part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to reshape the immigration courts.