Nicholas Nehamas

Ultimately, they are employees of the executive branch, and they report up to the attorney general, and by extension, up to the president.

Totally.

Yeah.

Immigration judges are appointed by the attorney general and they can be fired by the attorney general.

And that's just a function of how this system was initially created in the 80s.

And what it also means is that immigration judges have a lot less freedom to make their decisions based just on the law.

Because?

Because they ultimately have to follow the policy that's being put forward by the administration.

So they have to obey immigration laws, yes, but the way they interpret those laws has to follow the administration's policies.

Totally.

And so that can mean, depending on who's in power, they can interpret the immigration laws more strictly or more generously, more loosely.

And previous presidents have exerted a lot of influence over this system.

But still, no administration has done what President Trump is doing in imposing his will on the immigration courts.

It's really been unprecedented.

So we talked to dozens of judges, immigration attorneys, administration officials, asylum seekers, reviewed data.

on millions of cases, and we found that the administration put really systematic pressure on judges to deport more people and do it faster.

They have really tried to turn this court into a deportation assembly line.

And judges right now are granting asylum in fewer than 10% of cases, which is the lowest it's ever been for the 20 years we could examine data for.

So this has completely upended the way judges operate in their courtrooms.

Now, unfortunately, the judges can't talk to us on the record because they're employees of the Justice Department.