San Francisco’s immigration courts have been the hardest-hit in a wave of immigration judge firings and resignations across the United States, according to data shared by an immigration judges’ union and reviewed by Mission Local.
The city has lost 14 immigration judges to firings since April last year, and seven to retirement or resignation.
The losses have left the immigration judicial system in the city decimated. The city’s immigration courts had 21 judges at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term and now have just two judges. One of the courts closed at the beginning of May, and its second has now become a satellite of the Concord court across the bay.
Nationwide, 115 judges have been fired since April of last year, at least another 100 retired or were reassigned, and 46 judges were offered buyouts, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges. Mission Local’s analysis was based on data compiled by the association, a union representing immigration judges.
The union cautioned that this data could be an undercount: The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the federal agency that oversees immigration courts, has not shared complete data. The union had to cobble together the data on its own.
After San Francisco’s immigration courts, those in New York and Chelmsford, Massachusetts, lost the second and third most judges, respectively. The analysis examines the number of judges fired at each court and does not account for differences in court size.
“It’s a loss for San Francisco, and it is a loss for non-citizens and citizens alike that came to rely on a court that provided full and fair hearings, and now there no longer will be,” said Jeremiah Johnson, a former San Francisco immigration judge who was one of the 14 fired by President Trump’s administration in a wave of terminations that began in April 2025.
Trump said at the time: “We’re getting them [immigrants] out, and I hope we get cooperation from the courts because, you know, we have thousands of people that are ready to go out, and you can’t have a trial for all of these people.”
California has been the hardest-hit state, with New York and Massachusetts just behind.
Why was San Francisco so hard hit?
Mission Local reached out to the Executive Office for Immigration Review to ask whether there was any reason San Francisco was hit hardest; the office declined to comment. The fired judges across the country were similarly offered no reason for their termination.
The agency did state in an October 2025 memo that all judges are required to “adjudicate cases independently and impartially without favor to either party” and “should not be swayed by partisan interests or public clamor.”
Kristi Noem, the former Department of Homeland Security secretary, tweeted an ad in November soliciting “deportation judges” who would be paid up to $207,500 annually. “The Trump Administration is calling on YOU to join @TheJusticeDept as a Deportation Judge,” she wrote.
Some immigration attorneys and advocates said the administration targeted judges and courts that had perceived pro-immigrant biases.
Julia Pilkington-Alexander, an immigration attorney in the East Bay who represented clients in San Francisco, said judges in southern states with asylum approval rates below the national average of 37 percent were not fired.
Houston and Miami have low asylum-grant rates, at 11 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Fewer than a handful of judges in either of those cities were fired after Trump took office.
New York and Chelmsford, by contrast, where more judges were fired, have 67 and 35 percent asylum approval percentages respectively. The court in Chelmsford was a new court opened to relieve the overburdened Boston court and many of the judges there were nearing the end of their probationary period.
San Francisco’s average asylum grant rate, similarly, is 61 percent.
Another reason San Francisco may have been hit so hard, according to immigration attorneys, is that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which presides over the San Francisco Immigration Court, has historically issued rulings viewed as more favorable to immigrants.
Attorneys said immigration judges in San Francisco, following those rulings, often granted asylum at higher rates than judges in many other jurisdictions.
Fired judge Johnson said that despite rumblings, he did not foresee the complete gutting of San Francisco’s courts because he had confidence in the law, which provides that immigrants in removal proceedings are entitled to hearings presided over by judges.
“I held onto the belief the law could be followed,” he said. Still, he added, “It makes me feel disappointed.”