"The vast majority of asylum claims are not valid," he said during a swearing-in ceremony in Falls Church, Virginia, according to his prepared remarks. If judges do their job, he said, “the number of illegal aliens and the number of baseless claims will fall."
Judges hired under Trump ordered immigrants deported in 69% of cases, compared to 58% for judges hired as far back as the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Because hundreds of thousands of immigrants have cases before the court each year, that 11 percentage-point difference translates to tens of thousands more people ordered deported each year. Appeals are rarely successful.
Stephen Miller, the key architect of Trump's immigration agenda, told Reuters that the administration had aimed to hire more immigration judges as part of an effort to "create more integrity in the asylum process" and quickly resolve what he termed meritless claims to cut down on a massive backlog. The Trump administration's successors to Sessions, who was forced out in 2018, did not respond to requests for comment.
"There has been a significant lack of basic understanding of immigration law and policy with many - not all - but many of the new hires under the Trump administration," said Susan Roy, an attorney and former immigration judge appointed during the administration of President George W. Bush who has represented immigrants before some new judges.
Immigration judges and appellate judges are selected through an open and competitive process, free of political influence, she said. Such political impartiality is required under federal law.In May 2017, then-Attorney General Sessions selected James McHenry to lead EOIR, tasking him with reducing the ballooning backlog of deportation cases.
"We warned him of our concerns" about political hiring, Keller said of McHenry, who left his role as director in January.In September, the Government Accountability Office opened an investigation into alleged politicization and mismanagement of immigration courts after 10 Democratic senators accused the attorney general of subverting the hiring process to "promote partisan judges and to increase political influence,” according to an announcement from the senators at the time.
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