The Department of Justice has fired Judge Chloe S. Dillon, a judge in the San Francisco immigration court with the second-highest clearance rate for asylum cases, according to three sources close to the matter.Â
The firing comes a month after Mission Local reported that the Trump administration had fired four other San Francisco immigration judges since April, most of whom granted asylum at rates above the national average at the time of 42.3 percent.
Dillon granted asylum in 96.5 percent of cases before her in San Francisco, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse from Syracuse University, which tracked data from 2019 to 2024. She granted another form of relief in 1.4 percent of cases and denied just 2.1 percent of cases.
Dillon appeared to be outside the two-year probation period for immigration judges; she was hired in 2022. She is the second known immigration judge fired in San Francisco outside that probation period.
The Justice Department and the San Francisco Immigration Court did not respond to requests for comment. As of Friday evening, Dillon still appeared on a staff directory for San Francisco immigration judges.
Under the Trump administration, immigration judges see asylum-seekers arrested directly after their hearings.
In San Francisco, judges often deny federal motions to dismiss cases, which should prevent arrest, only to see asylum-seekers handcuffed outside their courtrooms by ICE agents regardless. They allude to what is about to happen, asking immigrants via interpreters if they are prepared for what’s waiting.
Dillon’s courtroom was no exception: An asylum-seeker was arrested outside of Dillon’s courtroom on Wednesday, preceding a chaotic street scene in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tackled at least four protesters to the ground and detained at least one, a U.S. citizen who was subsequently federally charged.
Immigration judges are not part of the judicial branch, unlike criminal judges. They are employees of the Department of Justice, specifically the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The administration has argued the president can fire and replace them at will.
Nationally, President Donald Trump has fired more than 50 immigration judges this year, according to the Associated Press, even though there is a backlog of about 3.5 million immigration cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.Â
Immigration judges have spoken out, calling the firings politically-motivated.
If you properly do your job instead of doing Trump’s Nazi job, you lose your job.
It’s the same message throughout the government.
Letting in every one just for the asking is NOT doing the job properly. These kiddies take BRIBES to do this.
@Blanca – That’s not what this means at all. People mostly apply for asylum when they have a reasonable case for asylum, at least under a government that actually believes in due process. People who don’t have a reasonable case mostly don’t take that risk.
You should be more concerned about the absolute destruction of checks and balances by leaning on the judicial branch to not, you know, judge anything. Just rubberstamp what the executive branch wants to impose. That’s the opposite of how it’s supposed to be.
Just another reason to vote for the mid-term CA redistricting.
Remember Maga Dudes, in the event your attempt to take over and change this democracy in a dictature, fails, remember that when democracy loving people manage to take their country back, there will be consequences. You are weaponizing the courts , the supreme court, the judicial system: Democracy loving people will remember and do the same: we will be coming after you, like a pitbull on a poodle, big time, no more “when they go low, we go high”; it will be pay back and jail time. Guaranteed. Enjoy the fun while it last.
“Dillon granted asylum in 96.5 percent of cases before her in San Francisco”
She was just rubber stamping people into the country. Hardly fits the image of the impartial, non-activist judge we are told to believe.
What’s your assumption here? Is there a percentage of cases that should be dismissed? Is there someone impartial looking at the rulings and deciding whether the judge was in error? Is there a jury? Is there any justice at all in this system?
“The acceptance rate for U.S. asylum cases varies significantly, but recent data shows it can be quite low, with some reports from 2023 indicating a 14% overall success rate and TRAC Reports noting a 35.8% grant rate in October 2024 for individual hearings before an Immigration Judge.” That’s an AI generated summary but it matches other sources I’ve seen. You can verify it. So… yes: A certain percentage of cases should indeed be dismissed – a helluva lot more of them than what this judge was doing. She made a mokery of the asylum system. Glad she’s fired.
Wanna be Waffen SS commander, the man who cowardly never went to the army , is trying to show who is the boss…. ignore him, he need attention like a demanding child, let him gesticulate and cry for attention.