Monday, April 20, 2026, episode of the podcast The Excerpt: The Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts took the form of dramatic ICE sweeps in major American cities and massive expansions of immigrant detention. But the administration is also working to restructure the nation’s immigration courts. USA TODAY national reporter Lauren Villagran joins The Excerpt to share her report.
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Dana Taylor:
The Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts have unfolded on many fronts since taking office in 2024, including dramatic ICE sweeps in major American cities and expanded immigration detention. But the administration is also working to reform the nation’s immigration courts, with dozens of immigration judges being fired across the country. How does this affect immigrants’ right to due process?
Hello. Welcome to this excerpt from USA TODAY. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Monday, April 20, 2026. She shares her report and insights here. USA TODAY national reporter Lauren Villagran joins us.
Lauren, I’m always happy to have you.
Lauren Villagran:
Thank you, Danna.
Dana Taylor:
Lauren, we’ve talked with you several times already this year about immigration issues, but this new story of yours specifically focuses on immigration judges. Please give me a general idea of what the Trump administration is doing here.
Lauren Villagran:
Yes, the Trump administration’s focus on the nation’s immigration court system is actually the cornerstone of the president’s mass deportation campaign. Dana, immigration judges are the ones who sign deportation orders that allow ICE to deport someone from the United States. Immigration judges are also the ones who can grant asylum and other forms of immigration relief that allow people to stay. So that was a key focus for the administration. Leaders within the Trump administration, including Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, have said there are immigration judges with political biases favoring immigrants and against the Department. The Justice Department, which runs the immigration court system, has fired more than 100 judges over the past year, with another 50 to 60 dismissed or retired. And the administration seeks to replace these judges with temporary judges, who are essentially under the jurisdiction of the executive branch and are appointed for only six months at a time.
Dana Taylor:
You highlighted one judge in particular in your article. Please tell us about Jeremiah Johnson.
Lauren Villagran:
Former immigration judge Jeremiah Johnson is a really good example, and in some ways emblematic of what happens within immigration courts. He had served in the San Francisco Immigration Court since 2017, when he was appointed under the first Trump administration. Currently, San Francisco is under the wrath of the government as a liberal city and famously liberal district. Judge Johnson’s asylum grant rate exceeds 90%, which likely made him a target of the current administration, which does not like the right to be granted asylum at a high price.
USA TODAY spoke with former Judge Johnson, who is from Guatemala. Mr. Johnson is currently traveling along the Guatemala-Mexico border, essentially following the immigration route from the U.S.-Mexico border to Guatemala. He said it was to see where the people he met in court were from.
Dana Taylor:
What are immigrant rights when it comes to due process? Can you break that down for me?
Lauren Villagran:
of course. Like all American citizens, immigrants have the right to due process. Therefore, if ICE wants to deport someone, it must bring that person in front of an immigration judge. Now, the interesting thing here is the husband. The immigration court system is different from other court systems in the United States. Judges are not truly independent. They can be hired or fired by the executive branch. So it’s a somewhat separate court system. Immigrants have their day in court. They have no right to a public attorney. They can certainly pay attorney fees, but they don’t have the right to a public defender. And the government is represented by government prosecutors working for ICE.
As a result, critics of the deal argue that the immigration court system is not actually independent, is not set up to provide true due process to immigrants, and is subject to changing political winds. And that’s what we’ve seen over the past year.
Dana Taylor:
You write that the Trump administration has been especially harsh against courts it views as liberal. Why?
Lauren Villagran:
For example, the San Francisco Immigration Court, which has the highest number of asylum cases in the country, is scheduled to close by May 1st. Many of the judges were dismissed from their courts. Those who remain will be transferred to suburban court in Concord, Calif., also in Northern California, but not San Francisco, where many Bay Area immigrants live.
Dana, there has been a lot of discussion about asylum granting rates, and judges and courts with very high asylum granting rates have been targeted by the White House. But what does the asylum grant rate actually mean? And Judge Johnson, for example, and other immigration lawyers and people who work in this field say it’s not enough to just look at that number or that rate on paper. For example, Judge Johnson previously handled cases involving many Sikh immigrants from India who could prove religious or political persecution. Some judges are less likely to examine different nationalities. There is a judge in New York who takes almost all Chinese cases, and he has a very high denial rate.
In other words, the problem is not just allegations of bias by individual judges, as the White House and Justice Department have asserted. There is also the question of where the courts will operate. Therefore, like the regular court system, immigration courts must follow the case law within their jurisdiction. California’s 9th District is more liberal. The 5th District, which represents parts of the South, Texas and Louisiana, is notoriously conservative, so immigration courts there operate differently.
Dana Taylor:
What’s going on in San Francisco’s immigration court these days?
Lauren Villagran:
What’s happening in the San Francisco courtroom is emblematic of some of what people are calling chaos in courtrooms across the country, Dana. With the dismissal of so many judges, the caseload has changed. People’s hearing has changed. And according to local reports, hundreds of migrants were deported in absentia because they did not know when their hearings would take place. Now, I spoke with a local lawmaker who is concerned about the remaining judges in San Francisco being transferred to suburban courts and how that will affect delays, as well as letting immigrants know when their hearings will be heard and who will be hearing them. So there’s a lot of criticism that all these changes are adding to the chaos, as immigration courts currently face a backlog of more than 2 million asylum applications.
Dana Taylor:
Lauren, what is the Trump administration saying about asylum?
Lauren Villagran:
Look, Dana, the Trump administration, both President Trump and his aides, have been saying for years that the U.S. asylum system is a kind of loophole for immigrants who make false claims to gain a foothold in the United States. During the wave of the Biden administration, we actually saw hundreds of thousands of people seek asylum at our Southwest border. And what happens during the asylum process is that you make an application when you set foot in the United States, and then you pursue that application through immigration court.
And, as we’ve talked about, the backlog is very long and it can take years to get a hearing. So the administration’s aggressive actions to limit access to asylum, not only by filing asylum claims at the southwest border, but also by doing all these redeployments in immigration court, are part of their goal to reduce access to the refugee system. Separately, people across the political spectrum will say that our immigration system is broken and it’s time for Congress to come to the table and create a new system that makes sense for the 21st century.
In reality, Dana, for many nationalities, including immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, asylum was one of the few legal means to reach the United States without entering the country illegally.
Dana Taylor:
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case that would allow the Trump administration to limit the number of asylum seekers admitted into the country, a practice known as metering. Please tell me about it.
Lauren Villagran:
Dana, the Supreme Court took up this case about so-called meters, but this may not be the most important case the Supreme Court is considering. The Supreme Court is also considering other challenges to the Trump administration’s mandatory blanket ban on asylum applications at the southwest border. So we’re going to see these two cases unfold over the next few months. It is noteworthy that President Joe Biden significantly restricted access to asylum at the border in 2024, the final year of the Biden administration, and President Trump continued this policy. And also, here in El Paso, Texas, we’ve seen waves of asylum seekers near the border for years, but it’s been very, very quiet.
Dana Taylor:
Lauren Villagran is a national reporter for USA TODAY. Thank you, Lauren, for sharing your insights on The Excerpt.
Lauren Villagran:
Thank you, Danna.
Dana Taylor:
We would like to thank Senior Producer Kaely Monahan for her production assistance. Executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think about this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thank you for your attention. I’m Dana Taylor. Tomorrow morning, we’ll be back with another episode of USA TODAY Excerpts.
