Matt Biggs, Anam Petit and Emmett Soper Transcript — Oct. 8, 2025
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:00:00):
We’re ending the day on a very important topic, and I think the footnote that I used in sending in the information that we sent out was what immigration enforcement looks like in local communities beyond sort of the jump outs that ICE has been doing that you see on television. There is another important and large part of what happens with immigration enforcement, and that’s what we’ll address today. The immigration courts in more than 70 jurisdictions across the country. The full picture of America’s dysfunctional immigration system is on display every day. The backlog of cases exceeds more than 3 million. Is that correct, Matt? 3.4. Excuse me. Yet the Trump administration has moved to fire nearly 140 judges since taking office 10 months ago. Matt Biggs to my left is president of the union representing immigration judges. He’s been tracking the troubling developments unfolding by the day, and he’ll describe those for you. Emmett Soper at the end and Anam Petit in the middle. There are former immigration judges who were abruptly terminated from their posts last month and are here to describe the extreme challenges on the ground. Please welcome our panel today and I’ll go to Matt first to sort of maybe provide an overview of what the immigration courts look like, the caseload, the backlogs, and what judges are dealing with today.
Matt Biggs/ International Federation of Professional Technical Engineers (00:01:58):
Yeah, no thanks and thanks for having us today. We appreciate it. 139 judges have either been fired or pushed out, bullied out from the Immigration Judge Corps in this nation since President Trump took office on January 20th. When you consider that there were only around 700 judges when this president took office, the number of judges is down below 600 now, and this comes at a time when the immigration court backlog is, last I saw was 3.4 million cases that are awaiting to be waiting to be heard. So it makes no sense whatsoever to fire judges and bully judges. Out of these jobs. IFPT, we’re a union that we have about a hundred locals throughout North America. One of our locals is the National Association of Immigration Judges. These judges here are our members, our union members. So our interest is obviously in protecting these jobs, but when you consider that you have a president that campaigned on strict enforcement of our immigration laws and whether you like it or not, he made no bones about his interest in deporting as many people as possible in order to deport people in this country.
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They are entitled to due process and their due process is to go before an immigration judge to make a decision based on the law and nothing else, whether they’ll be deported or not. So as a union, our number one interest is our members. We want to protect the interests of our members and protect their jobs. So number one, but this is also from a union perspective. If you look at what’s happening really from just a perspective of anyone, that this is an attack on the due process rights of people that are entitled to a fair hearing before an immigration judge. And if in this country we can attack due process and eliminate the due process rights of immigrants, it’s not a stretch to see where this administration can go after due process for American citizens. And that’s a huge concern from this union and from quite frankly, the labor movement.
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We’re part of the A Ffl CIO as well, IFPT is. So that’s that. And then if you look at Congress, let’s just take a look at Congress for a second and what they’re doing about this because quite frankly, we represent a lot of federal employees and this congress is pretty much abdicated their congressional responsibility to this president as far as we can see. But Congress in the budget reconciliation bill, they authorized the hiring of up to 800 immigration judges and support staff. So they put resources into that piece of legislation. And we weren’t crazy about that legislation. We actually opposed it, but we thought that was a good idea. Let’s invest in these immigration courts so immigrants in our nation, they can enjoy due process that they’re entitled to. And Congress, I mean this is a bipartisan supported issue. I mean, you don’t find many bipartisan supported issues in Congress anymore, but folks from the far left to the far right agree that we need to bolster up these immigration courts and invest in them.
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There was a bill immigration reform bill that was moving through Congress during the election season. It was sponsored by Senator Lanford, the main piece of legislation. Senator Langford from Oklahoma, not exactly a liberal, but he was moving through a piece of legislation, had bipartisan support, immigration reform, it would’ve passed that called also for the hiring of more immigration judges and candidate Trump at the time, single handedly a torpedoed that bill as some may remember. But folks from the far right to the far left, Republicans and Democrats all agree and support due process and support bolstering out these immigration courts. It’s it’s stunning to see now that we have an administration that is firing immigration judges for no reason at all. These judges are getting, they’re being fired not because of poor performance or misconduct. They’re just being fired and they’re being replaced by military lawyers, military lawyers. They’re being replaced by now. We have no disrespect for JAG lawyers. We appreciate their service to the country and we respect ’em. We have no doubt they’re honorable people, but they’re not qualified to do these jobs. And it begs the question, what does this administration have in store for these immigration courts moving forward?
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:07:14):
Judge Petit, I wonder if you could pick up the conversation and talk about what it looked like in your courtroom day to day before you were terminated, unfortunately last month, but perhaps describe a sense of what the workload looked like and the number of cases you were looking at weekly.
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:07:37):
Sure. Thank you. Happy to be here and speak to you all today. So just as a little bit of a backstory on me, I was appointed to be an immigration judge in September of 2023, and I was terminated in September, 2025. I worked on the non detained docket, which means that the cases I heard were for people who were not in ice custody, which is in contrast to the detained docket for folks who are in ice custody at the time of their hearing. So my workload was high, I was always busy. I had hearings every day. It’s a combination of master calendar hearings, which are preliminary status hearings, and then individual hearings which are trials. This administration increase the amount of trials that immigration judges hear per day from two to three. So that was an increased load on all of us because these cases take a lot of time to prepare.
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We receive often hundreds of pages of evidence for each case. We have to review affidavits supporting evidence, country conditions, sometimes in different languages with translations and due process has been mentioned. And that’s really a linchpin of the immigration court system. So we really take it as our duty to review these materials and be very well prepared. But that takes a lot of time when you’re in court almost every hour of every day. And then on top of that, you have motions to adjudicate, you have decisions to write, you have staff you need to confer with because we’re largely in charge of our own dockets. So it’s a very heavy caseload at the Annandale Immigration Court where Judge Soper and I both served and at every immigration court across the country.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:09:21):
And describe a bit about how you were notified that you were terminating.
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:09:28):
Sure. So I was on the bench when I received notification, so I was in my robe. I had the parties appearing before me on WebEx, and I had the interpreter seated to my right and I had a feeling it was coming that day. There’s been a pattern as to when they notify judges such as myself of being terminated. And it was typically the Friday of the pay period before your two year anniversary if you were on probation like I was. And down to the hour I received the email notification. It was a very short email. It said, please see attached. So I had to click on the attachment and that’s when I learned that I was terminated and I still had a case to decide. I had the parties appearing to receive a decision for a case. I had already spent about three, four hours hearing, so I excuse myself for a moment, I texted my husband, I always kept my phone on my robe in case there was an emergency.
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Robes have pockets, which a lot of people don’t realize. Well, you can pay extra to get that, which I did. And I texted my husband, I said, I don’t have time to talk and if I were to talk, I’d probably start crying, but I just want to let you know that I got terminated. And I went back into the courtroom and I issued a 40 minute decision for a case that I had put a lot of thought into and that I wanted to get completed for the sake of the system. One less case in the backlog, but also for the three respondents who were appearing before me, a mother of two children. I wanted to get that case done, and it was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do in my professional career. You just learn that you’ve lost your dream job.
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And so my hands were shaking, my voice was shaking, saying to the transcriber, this sends the decision. This is immigration. Judge Aman Petite made me very emotional thinking That might be the last time I ever say that and probably will be. And after that, I had to deal with an influx of condolences and support because word travels fast at the court when you’re fired and I had to pack up my office, which I hadn’t done, and it was very difficult and I walked out. I wasn’t escorted like I’ve heard some judges were by security, but I was flanked by fellow immigration judges and staff who were very sorry to see me leaving. I had a very reputation as a judge with everyone at the court, all parties who appeared before me. I was very proud of the legacy that I left there and that was it. I walked out and that was my last day as a judge.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:12:07):
Judge Soper, your court was in the same vicinity, but talk to us a bit about what kind of cases you were hearing before you departed and what your day to day was like in court.
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:12:26):
Sure. So first of all, thank you again for having all of us. I’m very happy to be here like Judge Petite was a judge at the Annandale Virginia Immigration Court, which is one of the suburbs of Washington DC I just by way of a little bit of background, was appointed as an immigration judge at the very end of 2016 under the Obama administration. I started serving in 2017 at the start of the first Trump administration for roughly three years from the spring of 2021 through the spring of 2024, I stepped back from the immigration court to serve as counsel to the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is the branch of the Department of Justice that administers the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals. I came back to the immigration court to start hearing cases again in the spring of 2024, and I served there until I was fired in mid July of 2025. Like Judge Petite, I was a judge on what we call the non detained docket, meaning I handled cases of non-citizens who were not in ice custody.
(00:13:49):
It was a very busy job adjudicated a lot of cases like she was mentioning. We had a lot of asylum applications. The bulk, I would say of my day-to-day work was holding what we call individual calendar hearings, which are relatively long hearings that take maybe a couple hours or longer where we hear testimony from somebody who’s applying for asylum, perhaps their family members or witnesses, and at the end of that, we hear arguments from their attorney, from the attorney representing the Department of home. Then we issue a decision. Sometimes we do our decisions in writing more often we do an oral decision along the lines, judge Petit was just describing, which is basically we take 30 or 40 minutes, we sit there in front of the parties, we recite the facts of the case, summarize the applicant’s testimony, announce whether we’re granting or denying their application or doing something else, and then give a fairly detailed legal rationale for why we’re reaching the decision that we are.
(00:15:05):
That was the bulk of our day-to-day work. It was, as she said, always a busy job. There were always decisions to write, decisions to sign. There were always motions to decide. As she mentioned, we had to coordinate with court staff. There were any number of things we had to do. It was a very difficult job, and as I said, I started as an immigration judge in 2017. It was very difficult and it’s a challenge unlike anything I’ve ever dealt with before, since professionally, you’re really put to the test in every single way. Your legal reasoning, your ability to control a courtroom, your ability to interact with the non-citizens who are in front of you, it really challenges you in every single way. I think I also thought it was unquestionably the most rewarding job that I ever had. The mix of issuing complicated legal decisions, but that are not just abstractions that actually very profoundly life can see sitting right.
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It was a challenge and also a reward unlike anything I’ve ever dealt with. And it was real honor, and I think probably most, if not all judges would agree with this. I think it’s a real honor to be appointed to a position, to an immigration judge position, not just necessarily not because you are a robe and you get called Judge and your Honor and things like that, but because you’re entrusted to make life altering decisions that have real consequences for people who you can see right in front of you. I always thought it was a real honor and I always took it very, very seriously and worked very, very hard.
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I knew really starting at the beginning of the Trump administration that I could be somewhat of a target, a lot of things in part because I had worked as counsel to the director of our agency during the Biden administration had worked on various immigration initiatives that I knew were not going to be popular in the Trump administration. So I knew that I was a target and I just figured just show up at work, try to do my job, try to decisions without any regard to all of the craziness that’s going on. I knew that I could be fired at any point. I saw some of our colleagues getting fired. I knew it could happen to me, and eventually it did. I was fired July 17th, very similar to Judge Petite. I just received a very short email. The subject line was termination, informing, not giving any reason, and saying that I had to be basically out of there by the end of the day. That’s just how it goes. The, there’s nothing really you can do. That was just it. I got the email at about, and my email access was cut off about maybe five 30 or so, six o’clock, something like that, and I was out of there by the end of the day. That’s just the world that we’re living in. It’s happened to us and it’s very hard to sit back and see what’s happening to the immigration courts and unfortunately, I wish I could be more optimistic, but I think it’s going to continue happening to our colleagues.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:18:45):
Good place to start with questions. I would go back here.
Olivia Diaz | Associated Press (00:18:58):
Hello, my name’s Olivia. I’m a reporter with ap, but I actually used to cover Crime and Justice in Fairfax County. So I was wondering about if before you were terminated, if you confronted form shopping in recent months. I covered a case, or I’m covering a case of someone who was detained in Rosalyn and was moved from Rosalyn to Central Virginia to Louisiana to Texas. And I’m just wondering if that’s something you have encountered and tried to combat from the bench before your time as the judge was up.
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:19:45):
Soper and I both were primarily on non, it wasn’t something I was personally confronted with, but it’s something that I can see happening with this administration. Unfortunately, for the detainees and their families who are getting moved to different parts of the country, which might have more adverse case law for their cases, in addition to making it more difficult for them to confer with counsel, which might be in a different state, confer with their family members who might be in a different state, they have pretty wide latitude in moving people if they’re in their custody. And this is me kind of speaking more in my personal capacity and my experience with immigration than my personal professional experience. But as far as changing venue, those motions need to be filed with the judge. Either party can move to change venue from one court to another. There’s a case that kind of controls and tells us what factors we need to consider.
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It’s a matter of Raman, R-A-H-M-A-N, and a judge can always deny a motion for change of venue and then the case wouldn’t move to where that person is detained. There are ways for them to appear by video at a different court. So long story short, ice can move people kind of where they want there. Maybe there’s more recourse in the federal courts to move them back or to not have them be transferred. But judges have very little control over where ice detains a person, but judges have more control over whether we want to grant a motion to change venue to a different court or not.
Simmerdeep Kaur | Walla Walla Union-Bulletin (00:21:34):
Hi, my name is Simmerdeep. I’m a federal policy reporter at the Walla Walla Union Bulletin, so it’s no longer just undocumented individuals that are getting detained. Now. There have been instances where students who are on visas have been, they’ve had their visas revoked and gotten detained for taking part in peaceful protests or green card holders getting denied reentry to the country or getting detained for having minor violations. So I’m curious, have you come across cases like that? And also do you have any insights into how exactly is IE and customs identifying and detaining these individuals? Is there a method to the madness?
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:22:14):
Sure, like Judge Petite had what we generally call a non detained dockets. So the non-citizens appearing in front of me, were not detainees, so I don’t, especially in the past year, I didn’t have much direct experience hearing cases with people involved or with people who had been detained by ice. I certainly have read in the media about some of the type of instances that you’re referencing. I mean, really all I can offer is my personal opinion, which I think it’s very problematic. And as ICE gets more aggressive, which unfortunately they seem to be doing, it’s something that is going to become more and more of an issue. They’re going to be more and more not just non-citizens, but also citizens who are caught up in this. And I think that it is, I think there are a lot of things that are problematic about what ICE is doing as far as detaining more and more people, including that citizens have been and will continue to be caught up in this. And sort of like before, I wish I could be more optimistic, but I think that this is an issue that is going to continue and worsen.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:23:38):
Matt, I just wanted to follow up on that question. Just what you’re hearing from other immigration judges who are hearing cases involving a detainee docket where ICE is also a presence in the courthouses and near the courtrooms where these judges work.
Matt Biggs/ International Federation of Professional Technical Engineers (00:24:03):
Yeah, I can’t provide any more insights on that. I mean, before we came here, we were just talking, I actually asked the question of is ICE outside your court? Were they outside your courtrooms when you were hearing cases? But yeah, I’m sorry, I can’t provide any more insights. I haven’t really talked to our judge as much about that particular issue
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:24:25):
And just to share my experiences on that. So one thing that people don’t realize is that when you’re in immigration court, it is adversarial. So there’s the respondent, they may have an attorney, they may not, and then there’s also a prosecutor is the general term, but they’re not technically prosecuting that person for any criminal charge, but it’s an ice attorney. ICE is always present in the courthouse, but they’ve always just appeared as attorneys in the case. What a change has been in this administration, which has been completely unprecedented, is to have ice enforcement also present at the courthouse. They have been detaining many individuals, some with criminal history, but most without any criminal history, without any adverse negative factors that would make them an enforcement priority for the government in prior administrations. And yeah, I mean it was a foreboding presence in every day we would see them in the hallways, they would be masked, they would be waiting.
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No one would know who they kind of had their eyes set on for that day. We would hear from the courtroom while we’re on the bench, like family members wailing, children crying. It was very disruptive to people having to testify in court about some of the most difficult things that have ever happened to them. And then there’s a chilling effect. People need to come to court to resolve their case. They’re entitled to due process under our constitution. But if you are scared that you are going to be detained and separated from your family just by stepping foot in that courtroom, a lot of people are going to weigh out their chances and they’re not going to take the risk and they’re not going to come to court. So that was actually one of the biggest changes that I witnessed in the Trump administration, which is just how many more failures to appear I had to preside over. And when you don’t come to court in immigration court, you get ordered removed in your absence. So I was issuing so many removal orders just for people who didn’t come to court because they were scared of getting detained and sent away. So that was a very devastating effect of the increase in ice enforcement in the courts.
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:26:39):
Just to add to that, very quickly, I saw up close you ice having a large presence in our court, and it was, I would say the most disturbing thing that I saw over the last year, like Judge Petit was mentioning ICE starting in, I want to say May of this year, ice enforcement as opposed to ice, we’ll call them prosecuting attorneys, had a very real presence in our court and by a very real presence. Here’s what I mean. Once this started, I made an effort two or three times a day to walk through our court’s lobby just because I wanted to see what was going on, to see what the ICE presence was. And many, many days they had a very significant presence. And by that I mean a bunch of guys standing around with masks, obviously there from ice, they didn’t have any idea or police uniforms or anything.
(00:27:39):
We all knew what was there. To me, it was just off the charts problematic that we as what we call ourselves, a court system would allow something like that to happen. And I think it was a real problem on a number of levels like Judge Petit mentioned. I will say starting in probably May or June, you’ve probably read on the news what ICE has been doing. Non-citizens have what we call master calendar hearings, which are sort of short preliminary hearings. At many of these hearings, the ice attorney will make an oral motion or request for the immigration judge to dismiss the case, particular person’s case with the idea that they want to arrest the person and place them into what’s known as expedited removal proceedings, meaning basically you can be sent back to your home country without any guarantee of a future hearing in this case.
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So I had heard about that and I thought, well, I don’t think that it’s justified to dismiss a case in this situation. If this happens in front of me, I’ll just deny these applications. And that’s basically what I did when I started making these motions to dismiss. In my cases, I would explain to the non citizen what was going on and I would tried to explain it and sort of non-technical, straightforward, practical terms, and then I would ask them, do you consent or do you object to your case being dismissed? And after I explained what it meant in straightforward terms, every single person who I asked this question to said, I object to my case to being dismissed. And I ended up denying every single request that DHS made to dismiss a case. And I initially thought, I’m protecting the people in front of me from being summarily arrested after they leave the courtroom.
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I was wrong about that to my knowledge. And I checked up on this after my hearings, every single case where DHS counsel made a motion to dismiss in every single one of those cases, the non-citizen was arrested as soon as they left the courtroom. And I’m talking about people who were appearing there by themselves to appear for their proceedings. I’m also talking about families being broken up. I had several cases where I would have a mother, father, and children appear in front of me. DHS would make a motion to dismiss the father’s case. Never. The mothers are the children’s case. It was always the father’s case, and I think that was because they were detaining men as opposed to women and children. In every single one of those cases, I denied the motion to dismiss, but then when I went back and looked at the electronic record the next day or two days later, I would see that DHS arrested the father in the family right after the proceeding.
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So it’s not just that they were arresting people when they came on their own to court, although that would be bad enough, but they were absolutely splitting up families and they were doing it on a routine basis. I knew that this was happening and I tried everything that I could to prevent this from happening. And nothing that I did worked in all of these cases that I’m talking about. When DHS decided that they were going to arrest somebody, they arrested them after leaving my courtroom, regardless of what I did, and I’ll just be honest, you can think what you want about immigration policy, people can legitimately differ about how immigration laws should be interpreted, et cetera. I don’t think, and this is just my opinion, but I don’t think there’s any real way to justify what DHS has been doing and I understand continues to do with respect to arresting people who are just trying to follow the rules, just trying to appear in court, just trying to get their day in court, which they’re entitled to. They come to court and they get arrested sometimes splitting up families. I just don’t think there’s a way to justify doing that. And I saw it up close repeatedly, and that was the one, probably the single most disturbing thing that I saw in court during this administration.
Sean Keenan | Atlanta Civic Circle (00:32:13):
Hey there, my name is Sean Keenan. I’m here from Atlanta. I hope I could get all three of your takes on this. I’m curious where everybody lands on the spectrum of optimistic to apocalyptic. You three are probably all familiar with the Mario Guevara case in Atlanta, for those of you who are not. He was a Spanish language journalist who was arrested during an anti-ice protest. He was subsequently deported to El Salvador. Federal agents said he was of questionable legal status. His lawyer said he was targeted for his reporting. He was following ice around just monitoring all manner of immigration stories. My question is, to what extent do you think a case like that is a harbinger of something much worse? Should we be fearful that the federal government could soon further weaponize deportations to crack down on reporting? It doesn’t favor.
Matt Biggs/ International Federation of Professional Technical Engineers (00:33:22):
I could start by, I mean, I’m a union president. We’ve been very critical of this administration. We represent one of our locals, represent a nonprofits, nonprofits, and there’s a lot of concern within our union and the nonprofit, particularly progressive nonprofits, that this administration will target ’em for what they say publicly exercising their free speech rights and representing their members. I think the case you just described falls into that category. I think it’s a very real threat. I think it’s something that this administration would gladly do. And as we indicated earlier, it sends a chilly message to others that might want to report and provide transparency to the public about what’s really going on out here in this case, in the immigration space. But yeah, I mean at some point, I guess it comes down to this at some point, when will the American public stand up and say, no more? We will not tolerate this. But right now, they’re coming for immigrants and they’re coming for, quite frankly, their racial profiling. They’re going after anyone that they deem might look like an immigrant unfortunately, and they’re gathering up American citizens. They’re gathering up people with green cards. They’re literally kidnapping people off the streets and making ’em disappear.
(00:35:04):
At what point will the American public have had enough? Again, as a union, we are very concerned with the fork in the road we’re facing here as a nation, and other unions are concerned about it too because guess what? Unions represent immigrants. Some of ’em represent undocumented immigrants, people that just wake up every day and go to work for a living and provide for their families. And Abrigo Garcia case, for example, their union’s been very vocal in support of him. But yeah, it’s very concerning to us as a union.
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:35:46):
I mean, I’ll keep it short. I know there are other questions, but I mean, I share Matt’s concerns. Free speech is in great peril these days. We’re seeing the immigration enforcement system and by extension, the immigration court system being weaponized to target those people that the administration disagrees with. You raised one example, Khalil Mahmood is another example of someone who’s facing really severe immigration consequences because primarily of him exercising his free speech. Again, this is my personal opinion here, not my opinion as an immigration judge or former immigration judge, but yeah, I mean it’s scary times and I am frankly quite terrified to see where this can go because it’s only been a few months of this administration. We still have a lot more to go, and this is kind of just where we’re headed. I don’t think it’s where we’ve ended
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:36:43):
Just quickly. I’m not super familiar with the specifics of that case, but there’s not much I think that this administration won’t do as far as weaponizing immigration enforcement.
Hannah Pinski | Louisville Courier Journal (00:36:55):
Hi, I’m Hannah. I’m with the Louisville Courier Journal, and from this conversation, it sounds like what you’re describing is going to immigration court is almost like a trap for people now and moving forward once we do come to a day where ice enforcement is no longer at the courts arresting people after they’ve had a hearing, are you worried that there’s now a precedent that people aren’t just going to show up to court moving forward Now whether or not ice enforcement is there and how do you then let the immigrants know that it’s safe to come to court? It’s safe to have a hearing when they aren’t there anymore
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:37:37):
Because you have to think of who are the people appearing in immigration court? They’re usually from, and I’m generalizing, but this is what I see. You don’t see a ton of people with very high levels of formal education. You don’t see people who are watching the same news that we’re all really tapped into. There’s not a high level of understanding. What they do have is, and again, I’m brushing with a broad brush here, but you have very insulated immigrant communities where the primary way that they’re getting information is through other people and what they see. So it’s like someone’s neighbor, his nephew, sister got detained at court or her husband did, and that’s enough to do damage for indefinitely because how do you shake that mindset even if there’s a new administration because you can’t unhear what you heard about that one detention from that one person. And we can see things as judges that even immigration who appear in that space regularly don’t see. So we see trends in ice enforcement, we see waves, we see up and down, but it’s so unpredictable these days that I also think it’s reasonable for people to hear one thing and even though two years past to still think that same trend exists, even if things have changed because they could change the next fortunately is quite severe and I believe it will be quite long lasting.
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:39:04):
Yeah, I think once you lose trust, it’s very hard to get it back. And I think that immigration courts during this administration have showed themselves to be absolutely untrustworthy. I think that people are right to question non-citizens. That is what will happen if I go to court. Can I trust the system to treat me fairly? Can I trust that I’m not just walking into a trap? I think this is very, very unfortunate. The non-citizens who are appearing in front of us are right at this point not to trust the immigration courts. The immigration courts have shown by doing things like permitting ICE to make arrests in our facilities in the manner that they have, that it’s not a fair system and we are not to be trusted. I say this as somebody who has worked in the immigration court system for a long time has worked for the Department of Justice for a long time. I really hate saying that, but I think it’s true currently, and it’s a little bit hard to see how the system comes back from this, how we regain people’s trust. It’s not at all going to be easy.
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:40:25):
And just one more point to add to that, it’s not just unrepresented people who aren’t showing up to court as well. I had multiple individual hearings during this administration where I would have an ice attorney seated at the table and I’d have respondent’s counsel seated at the table, and I’d go in, I’d say, where’s respondent? Right? We talk about it on the record and they say, they told me they’re not coming. They’re scared to get detained. I told them exactly what would happen if they come to court. I told them what would happen if they didn’t. They know that they’re getting a removal order if they don’t show up, and they took their chances. So that’s after getting a counsel discussion from an attorney that you’re paying to represent you, and they still didn’t want to come to court. So I just wanted to make that one point that it’s not just people who are unrepresented that are rolling the dice and not coming to court, but it’s people who went the full way. I would have hundreds of pages of evidence and sometimes cases that I could see myself granting if the testimony was credible and they didn’t have their opportunity because they were so scared of getting detained and picked up.
Katarina Sostaric | Iowa Public Radio (00:41:28):
My name is Katarina. I work for Iowa Public Radio. I’m going back to the people you said once their motions were dismissed, they were detained by ice. Anyway, what happens after that? What’s the process after that? What’s the legal basis at that point for them getting detained their motion when their case was not dismissed? And kind of as a follow-up to what you were just talking about, how much is our immigration judge’s authority to be able to decide these cases being undermined?
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:41:57):
Well, when a non-citizen is in immigration court proceedings, removal proceedings, ICE generally has the discretionary authority to detain them. In other words, ice, if they choose, can detain anybody who is in removal proceedings. Now, historically, for a number of reasons, they’ve chosen not to detain people in most situations. There’s never been a time when they were detaining people for no reason other than that they showed up to immigration courts. So their authority to detain as non-citizen in removal proceedings is very broad, but they’ve typically exercised that authority very judiciously. They’ve, except starting in the recent past have never, as a matter of practice, just detained people who just showed up for the immigration court proceedings, and they certainly were not doing things like separating the family, arresting the father in front of the mother and children. That is absolutely new. And as far as what happened next, I can’t say with certitude because once this happened, the non-citizens were no longer in front of me.
(00:43:35):
They no longer had cases in front of me, but I believe generally speaking, for the non-citizens who were arrested, so they would be brought to one of the highest detention facilities. There’s a few here in Virginia, their case would go on a different docket. One of the judges who typically handles cases involving detained non-citizens, I believe that what was generally happening was then at their next hearing in front of this other judge, ICE would renew their request that this person’s case be dismissed. And then it was up to the other judge how to handle it. From what I could glean, some judges were denying a lot of those requests. Some of them were granting those requests. It just depended on the specifics of the case and frankly, who the judge was.
Amir Khafagy | Documented (00:44:28):
Hi, how are you? My name’s Amir Khafagy. I’m an immigrant labor reporter from Documented New York, so this is right up my alley. So what I was curious about, and I was hoping you can help me understand how are they making the determination to fire any particular judge? What are they looking at, right? I know you said is it completely random or they’re looking at your case history, how many cases you’ve dismissed and how many you have, and I was just curious if you can go into that. And also what I was very curious about is, and I’ve heard this happening in New Jersey, is that ICE lawyers, were trying to potentially intimidate judges. So is there a sense of they’re trying to create an incentive for judges not to dismiss cases or to go along to get along kind of situation with the Trump administration. So I hope you can explain a little bit on that too as well. Thank you.
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:45:25):
Sure. So to answer your first question, no one really knows because none of us are given the reason why we’re fired. In fact, judge Soper and I both spoke to our assistant chief immigration judge, who’s our direct supervisor after being fired, and we were told directly that there was no reason that we were fired to his knowledge. And he’s the one who wrote my probationary report that got sent up and then the decision is made. Judge Soper and I are also a little dissimilarly situated in that I was still on probation. You’re on a two-year probationary period as an immigration judge. It’s just historically how they’ve always hired immigration judges. The way I understand it is so that judges can start sooner while they still finish our background check while we’re on probation. So it just is more efficient for them to hire us on that temporary probationary status.
(00:46:19):
But historically, probationary judges have been converted at a very high rate, around 95% make it absent some egregious performance issues, you would get converted to a permanent position. That’s all changed during the Trump administration because we’re on that probationary status. We are less protected legally as far as challenging any unlawful termination. And so we’re being fired at much higher clips. It’s probably around 50 to 60% of all probationary judges have been fired during the Trump administration. You see some trends within those judges. You see judges with more private practice or immigrant friendly backgrounds being let go. I fall in that category. I was in private practice for over a decade. I taught at Georgetown Law. I taught a gender-based clinical practicum, so that was my background coming on the bench. You start seeing other trends, judges who might have higher than the national average grant rates are more likely to be let go, and that’s all that we can really glean because that’s the only public facing information. I don’t have judges completion rates. I don’t have how they rule on motions to dismiss. There might be other trends there that aren’t available to me. But then you also see a lot of outliers to those trends as well. And I think that the one common denominator among the fired probationary judges are that we were all appointed during the Biden administration. And then your situation is a little different.
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:47:54):
Yeah, it’s hard to say. Judge Petit was saying there are some commonalities. There are some judges though, who it’s very hard to understand why they were fired and perhaps, I’m not sure if I want to say it’s by design, but it’s certainly the idea that there’s an element of randomness in this that nobody is safe, that anybody coming to work on any given day could get that email, which we’ve all seen saying you’re fired. I mean, as you can imagine, that has a terrible effect on morale. Nobody knows if they’re going to be at their job next week. It’s a very difficult job that people have devoted their entire careers to. It is really terrible for just the morale of the office, for the morale of the judges. And I honestly, I don’t think it’s too cynical to say it’s by design. I think that that’s serves what this administration wants. They want us all sort of on pins and needles, and they want all of the judges who are there, I think to be afraid for their jobs and to be thinking, well, I don’t want to get fired. What do I need to do to keep from getting fired? I think that’s what they want their mindset to be. So I wouldn’t discount the idea that there’s intentionally an element of randomness to some of the people who are getting fired.
Mary Steurer | North Dakota Monitor (00:49:33):
Oh, there we go. Hi, my name’s Mary. I’m from North Dakota, judge Soper. I’m wondering if you have a theory as to why the ICE attorneys bothered to file those motions to dismiss if they were going to end up arresting the defendants Anyway, I don’t understand why they would do that.
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:49:53):
It’s a policy that they’ve implemented and they’re under orders to do this. It makes their lives easier. If the judge grants the motion to dismiss, they’re doing it in cases where people are potentially subject to what’s called expedited removal, which is a special legal provision that applies to people who’ve been in the US for less than two years and meet some other requirements. And basically under the law, somebody who fits that profile can be removed from the United States in some cases without an immigration hearing or any sort of an immigration court process. So they’re doing it or they have been doing it specifically to people who meet that profile. And I think that from the ICE perspective, if the judge dismisses the, well, let me back up a little bit to be put into expedited removal, their proceedings have to be dismissed because you cannot be removed from the US under the expedited removal provisions if you are in immigration court proceedings.
(00:51:07):
So removing somebody in this sort of accelerated fashion can only be done once their immigration court proceedings have been dismissed. So if they get the immigration judge at the non detained master calendar hearing to agree to dismiss the case that simplifies everything for ice, because then they can just arrest the person and start the expedited removal process. Whereas if the judge refuses to dismiss the case, they can still arrest the person, but then they have to have present them for another hearing once they’ve been detained, and the process keeps going until the case eventually gets dismissed. So I think the reason they’re making these requests to dismiss cases at non detained hearings is to sort of kickstart the removal process.
Abbey McDonald | Salem Reporter (00:51:59):
Hi, am Abbey. I’m from Oregon. You both talked about advising families through things that might be deceptive, and I’ve read stories about judges sneaking people out the back doors of courthouses. I was just wondering if you could go over what tools you have to resist what you would perceive as an unjust deportation?
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:52:21):
We’re very limited. We’re neutral arbiters in the courtroom. We’re not playing any side. There’s the respondent, they’re on one side, they might have counsel, they might not. And then there’s ice, and we’re the deciders, and we have to be unbiased and fair. And every immigration judge that I know takes that very seriously. And coming from private practice previously, it was something that I was always very aware of because I never wanted to make it seem like I was giving legal advice, and I never wanted to make it seem like I had any personal opinion on the outcome of the case. But especially for someone who’s unrepresented, part of our role, excuse me, is to make sure that they understand proceedings. They are entitled to due process. They need to be able to meaningfully understand and participate in their case. So for us, it’s always kind of striking that balance between explaining legal options available to them, but without giving them legal advice, which can be difficult when you’re explaining what expedited removal proceedings are.
(00:53:24):
Judge Soper just did that today. Try and explain that to someone who has a second grade highest level of education and try and explain that in a way that objectively tells them what it is without telling them what the implications are. And that was always an elephant in the room because we can’t really talk about the ice agents waiting outside. That’s a direct correlation of the position that they’re going to take and the ruling that we’re going to make that day. Then I stayed away from anything that interfered with ice enforcement or could be perceived as interfering with ice enforcement. I mean, I had my background. I didn’t want to be perceived as biased, let alone be biased. And so that made some very difficult decisions for us. A lot of people, for example, were filing motions to appear by video. And if people were filing motions saying that they were scared of ice enforcement and that’s why they wanted to appear by video, I would generally deny those motions because I didn’t want to make it seem like I was biased or interfering with ice enforcement. Obviously, if there were other reasons why they had to appear by video, I would hear them out. But I understood why those motions were being filed. I think they were reasonable. But I had also heard of the Wisconsin judge who was getting reprimanded. And that’s something that we as judges, we talk about and we consider, and it’s a very difficult position for judges, and I have a lot of respect for the judges who are still there making those difficult decisions every day.
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:54:52):
I agree with that. And yeah, it’s very much true. Our real authority was somewhat limited. We can grant or deny a motion. We can do our best so that the courtroom, I’m not talking about the court in general, but just our courtroom has an atmosphere that’s respectful where we listen to each other. We can do our best to make people comfortable when they appear in front of us, but we don’t have any control about what happens when somebody steps outside the courtroom. And it was a very difficult thing for me to deal with. And I think for a lot of my colleagues as well, knowing I control my courtroom, but I don’t control the lobby. I walk through the lobby and I see six or seven guys with masks who I know are there from ice to represent somebody. When somebody steps outside the courtroom, I can’t stop them. All I can do is hope that the person who just appeared in front of me isn’t going to be arrested. But there’s nothing I can do to control what goes on in the lobby. One of the most difficult things in the last few weeks for me as a judge was being confronted really by the limits of my control.
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:56:12):
One thing I’ll just add to that is the amount of crying that’s happening in immigration court is on a much higher level than it always has been. And people always cry in immigration court. We’re talking about the worst thing or things that have happened to people in their lifetimes when they’re applying for asylum. But I’ve seen ice attorneys cry at the table when someone’s getting detained. I’m seeing interpreters in the hallways just falling their eyes out because we’re seeing the direct effects of a mother being separated from her husband and a child clinging onto a dad’s leg, and then judges, we’re all human, we’re affected by it. So the amount of times I’ve had a judge tell me like I cried in the bathroom today, it’s been a rough day. There are real human implications of what’s happening, and that’s in addition to just the broader systemic implications on due process in the immigration court system functioning as a whole. But I just wanted to add that anecdote to that question.
Raisa Habersham | Miami Herald (00:57:13):
Hi, thank you so much again for joining us this afternoon. My name is Raisa Habersham. I’m a reporter with the Miami Herald. Just to kind of piggyback off of what you all said, obviously we’re all covering immigration in our newsrooms differently, but are there things that you’ve kind of seen that you feel like maybe we should be paying attention to as reporters, like anything that may be missing that we probably want to keep our eye on? I know you all don’t necessarily deal with the de detainees, you deal with the non detainees, but are there things from your vantage point that you’ve kind of seen, even if it’s in your courtrooms or things among your colleagues that you think we should be paying attention to?
Anam R. Petit/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:57:54):
Do you have any thoughts?
Emmett Soper/Former DOJ Immigration Judge (00:57:59):
I know that the arrests in immigration court have gotten a lot of media attention to my knowledge. The arrests that were happening at our court did not get a lot of media attention. And honestly, I wish that, and I thought this many times over the summer that there was more media attention to the arrests that were happening in our court. I saw a lot of reporting about the New York Court, the San Francisco court. Those things were also happening at the Annandale Court, at the Sterling Court, at all of the courts in this area. For whatever reason, they did not seem to be getting nearly the media attention that the arrests in places like New York and San Francisco were. I don’t know to what extent the arrests continue. I’ve heard that people are not being arrested at the same numbers as they were maybe like in June and July. But I think that the arrests of people in immigration court is a major, major story that the warrants coverage,
Matt Biggs/ International Federation of Professional Technical Engineers (00:59:06):
I’ll just say hold these elected officials accountable in Congress. I mean, they are there to provide oversight of this administration and the way this administration is operating, and they have the power to stop this. And you right for the Miami Herald, huge immigrant population in Miami. But you also have quite a few Republican lawmakers that supposedly care about immigrant rights, and they should be held accountable. They should be asked the questions, what is your position on what’s going on in these immigration courts and what are you doing about it? Congress can stop it. Congress can add, they could stop it right now in whatever CR we’re going to pass. Eventually, they can defund the ability of ICE agents to arrest people at these immigration courts. They can defund the ability of this administration to illegally fire immigration judges. They can do it like that. And these, particularly these Republican members of Congress that supposedly they represent immigrant populations, they hold the power. So I guess I would implore you to hold the elected officials that can put a stop to this in Congress, hold them accountable and ask them the hard questions.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (01:00:40):
Things that we rarely get access to are judges like these. Rarely do you hear from judges. And we are so fortunate to have them here to talk about a subject that demands our attention. So I want to thank them for coming and providing such an instructive session for us today. So thank you very much.
