Before he was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this year, federal immigration Judge Emmett Soper regularly walked the lobby of his northern Virginia courthouse and was increasingly stunned at what he saw.
“I wanted to see what was going on, to see what the ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] presence was,” Soper told National Press Foundation journalism fellows. “And by that I mean a bunch of guys standing around with masks – obviously there from ICE – they didn’t have any ID or police uniforms or anything.”
Soper said the level of intimidation just outside the courtroom where non-citizens are called for status hearings was “just off-the-charts problematic that … a court system would allow something like that to happen.”
That judicial system, which operates in more than 70 jurisdictions across the country and where Soper worked until his dismissal in July, has been thrust into the center of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign.
Nearly 140 judges have either been fired, resigned or have taken government-offered buyouts at a time when federal authorities have ramped up deportation efforts across the country, leaving a backlog of cases that has topped 3.4 million, said Matt Biggs, president of the union representing the jurists.
“This is an attack on the due process rights of people that are entitled to a fair hearing before an immigration judge,” Biggs said. “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.”
It is rare for judges to speak publicly about their work, but Soper and Anam Petit, a former judge who was notified of her dismissal last month while on the bench, said the federal actions have jolted immigrant communities across the country, prompting many to shun the court system and move further into the shadows of American life.
Petit said the courthouse presence of masked ICE agents has marked an “unprecedented” and “chilling” turn in courthouse operations.
“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,” Petit said.
Data shows that migrant arrests have increased significantly under the Trump administration, but the percentage of those arrests being of convicted criminals has dropped since Biden’s term.
“It was a foreboding presence … every day we would see them in the hallways. They would be masked, they would be waiting,” Petit said. “No one would know who they kind of had their eyes set on for that day … 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.”
While Petit’s September dismissal was not entirely unexpected – she was appointed during the previous administration and was part of a cadre of jurists nearing the end of their probationary period – it was jarring to receive the email notification just as she was preparing to deliver a decision from the bench.
“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 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,” Petit said. “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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