{"id":208283,"date":"2026-03-07T01:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T01:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/208283\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T01:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T01:53:09","slug":"s-f-immigration-courts-gutted-21-judges-down-to-2-after-planned-departures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/208283\/","title":{"rendered":"S.F. immigration courts gutted: 21 judges down to 2 after planned departures\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the start of last year, San Francisco\u2019s two immigration courts<\/a> had 21 judges. By mid-March there will just be two left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two judges, Karen Schulz and Michelle Slayton, will be leaving the immigration court soon, according to the California governor\u2019s office and court sources. In all, 19 judges have left the two downtown immigration courthouses \u2014 12 of them were fired, and the rest retired, asked for a transfer, or were appointed to another court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reduced number of judges<\/a> makes it more likely that asylum-seekers\u2019 cases will be stuck in legal limbo for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Karen Schulz will be leaving the immigration court<\/a> for a job at the Santa Clara County Superior Court, per an appointment by Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a>. Michelle Slayton will be transferred to the Portland Immigration Court, per her own request, according to sources with knowledge of the immigration court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This comes as at least 120,000 immigrants have pending cases<\/a> waiting to be heard at the San Francisco courts, further clogging an already overburdened system<\/a> and making it difficult for immigrants to have their day in court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who\u2019ve been waiting for years to have their asylum case adjudicated are now going to wait even more,\u201d said Milli Atkinson<\/a>, 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 \u201cattorney of the day\u201d<\/a> program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AMilli Atkinson at the office of the San Francisco Bar Association on July 8, 2025. Credit: Frankie Solinsky Duryea<\/p>\n

Atkinson said she is already seeing cases that were on the calendar for this year being pushed to 2028 and 2029.<\/p>\n

San Francisco\u2019s immigration courts, along with immigration courts nationwide, came under fire<\/a> when President Donald Trump, through Attorney General Pam Bondi, began firing judges<\/a> at the courthouse starting in April last year<\/a>. No reason was given for the firings<\/a>, but a memo from October 2025 from the Executive Office of Immigration Review said that all judges were required to \u201cadjudicate cases independently and impartially without favor to either party\u201d and that judges should not be \u201cswayed by partisan interests or public clamor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immigration attorneys and advocates said that the administration targeted judges for firing because of \u201cperceived bias.<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n

The extremely decreased capacity of San Francisco\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey 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,\u201d said Atkinson.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people are going to be at risk of being ordered removed and losing their case just because they didn\u2019t get the right notification,\u201d Atkinson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Executive Office of Immigration Review did not respond to a request from Mission Local for comment on the departures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the start of last year, San Francisco\u2019s two immigration courts had 21 judges. By mid-March there will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[14,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-208283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-immigration","9":"tag-san-francisco","10":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","11":"tag-san-francisco-news","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}