At the start of last year, San Francisco’s two immigration courts had 21 judges. By mid-March there will just be two left.
Two judges, Karen Schulz and Michelle Slayton, will be leaving the immigration court soon, according to the California governor’s office and court sources. In all, 19 judges have left the two downtown immigration courthouses — 12 of them were fired, and the rest retired, asked for a transfer, or were appointed to another court.
The reduced number of judges makes it more likely that asylum-seekers’ cases will be stuck in legal limbo for years.
Karen Schulz will be leaving the immigration court for a job at the Santa Clara County Superior Court, per an appointment by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Michelle Slayton will be transferred to the Portland Immigration Court, per her own request, according to sources with knowledge of the immigration court.
This comes as at least 120,000 immigrants have pending cases waiting to be heard at the San Francisco courts, further clogging an already overburdened system and making it difficult for immigrants to have their day in court.
“People who’ve been waiting for years to have their asylum case adjudicated are now going to wait even more,” said Milli Atkinson, who directs the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the San Francisco Bar Association. She has been organizing to ensure there is an attorney on call every day at the immigration courts in San Francisco, through a program known as the “attorney of the day” program.
Milli Atkinson at the office of the San Francisco Bar Association on July 8, 2025. Credit: Frankie Solinsky Duryea
Atkinson said she is already seeing cases that were on the calendar for this year being pushed to 2028 and 2029.
San Francisco’s immigration courts, along with immigration courts nationwide, came under fire when President Donald Trump, through Attorney General Pam Bondi, began firing judges at the courthouse starting in April last year. No reason was given for the firings, but a memo from October 2025 from the Executive Office of Immigration Review said that all judges were required to “adjudicate cases independently and impartially without favor to either party” and that judges should not be “swayed by partisan interests or public clamor.”
Immigration attorneys and advocates said that the administration targeted judges for firing because of “perceived bias.“
The extremely decreased capacity of San Francisco’s two immigration courts is a financial toll on both immigrants and nonprofits. Without a judge, cases are moved to other courts or delayed. Immigration nonprofits need to re-organize their work, and immigrants need to continue paying their attorneys.
“They have to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees to prepare for court just to have it canceled, and then have it rescheduled where they will have to pay again for all the preparation that attorneys put into these court cases,” said Atkinson.
Atkinson added that the court is so understaffed, it cannot send out notices of change to cases quickly enough. The penalty for not showing up for an immigration court hearing, even by mistake, is to be ordered removed from the United States.
“A lot of people are going to be at risk of being ordered removed and losing their case just because they didn’t get the right notification,” Atkinson said.
The Executive Office of Immigration Review did not respond to a request from Mission Local for comment on the departures.