{"id":243319,"date":"2026-03-30T12:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T12:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/243319\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T12:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T12:40:09","slug":"the-s-f-immigration-court-is-being-dismantled-charts-show-how-bad-its-gotten-for-asylum-seekers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/243319\/","title":{"rendered":"The S.F. immigration court is being dismantled. Charts show how bad it’s gotten for asylum-seekers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2016, the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report<\/a> identifying the San Francisco immigration court as one of the country’s most favorable<\/a> toward people seeking to remain in the country.<\/p>\n

Nearly a decade later, that’s no longer the case.<\/p>\n

In 2024, about 36% of cases in the San Francisco immigration court resulted in a removal order, much lower than the nearly 50% across all courts in the U.S.<\/p>\n

But in 2025, the San Francisco rate jumped to 70%, according to a Chronicle analysis of data from the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.<\/p>\n

The trend hasn’t let up. In the first two months of 2026, more than 80% of rulings in the San Francisco court have ordered the immigrant’s deportation\u00a0– just a few percentage points below the national rate, and the highest percentage since the late 1990s. That totals more than 10,000 removal orders since the start of 2025.<\/p>\n

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The trend reflects the Trump administration’s dramatic reshaping of the immigration court system into a platform for deportations, legal experts and immigration advocates say, raising concerns about due process.Hardly anywhere has that been more pronounced than in the San Francisco court, one of the busiest in the country, which some argue the government has targeted for its perceived favorability<\/a> toward immigrants. The Department of Justice fired<\/a> a dozen of the court’s 21 judges last year, and several others retired.<\/p>\n

As of late March, the court had been reduced to a shadow of its former staffing, with just two judges and one assistant chief judge on the court’s roster<\/a>. Reports<\/a> indicate the administration will transfer the remaining staff to the Concord court as early as this summer.<\/p>\n

Immigration judges are under immense pressure to “dispose of cases rather than correctly decide cases,” said Kevin Johnson, a law professor at UC Davis. He pointed out that unlike in the criminal and civil court systems, the federal government can remove judges in immigration courts at any time.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has also handed down sweeping directives<\/a> regarding how judges should interpret immigration law. That’s a big reason why having access to cheap or free legal representation, commonly cited as a driving force behind the San Francisco court’s previously low removal rates, no longer carries as much protection, Johnson said.<\/p>\n

“The deck is stacked to make it very difficult for any noncitizen to win, with representation or not,” he added. “Attorneys aren’t magicians, and they can’t change the law or the legal interpretation like the president and the attorney general can.”<\/p>\n

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That’s assuming an immigrant can even see a judge. The decimation of the San Francisco court has left many immigrants in “limbo,” said Elena Hodges, a Bay Area immigration attorney and co-director of Pangea Legal Services. Hearings that had been scheduled with now-fired judges haven’t been replaced, stretching out a years-long process<\/a> indefinitely.<\/p>\n

“Each time you have a hearing date approach, there’s an enormous investment of energy and time from the client side and the attorney side,” Hodges said. “And then (after each delay) you start, not from scratch, but pretty close.”<\/p>\n

The slowdown is visible through the number of case completions. The San Francisco court issued about 600 initial rulings in February, EOIR data shows, roughly half of its 2025 average.<\/p>\n

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The hearings that do occur are often rushed toward a removal order,\u00a0Hodges said. Judges phoning in from other jurisdictions\u00a0– including military lawyers installed as temporary judges\u00a0– have taken up some of the backlog. The Associated Press found<\/a> last year that these military judges were more likely to order removal.<\/p>\n

Moving cases to the Concord court will likely exacerbate the issue, Hodges said. Because many immigrants are coming from the South Bay, it will be harder for them to access. And it’ll be more difficult for legal providers and community supporters to do the same, she added.<\/p>\n

Still, Hodges believes there are things cities and communities can do\u00a0– ensuring access<\/a> to affordable housing, health care and child care, or accompanying<\/a> immigrants to their hearings. It’s often only when someone is economically secure, she argued, that they’re able to focus on their legal battles.<\/p>\n

“People are not a legal case,” Hodges said. “People are more than that, and they need to be able to have all of their needs met to have a fighting chance.”<\/p>\n

This article originally published at The S.F. immigration court is being dismantled. Charts show how bad it’s gotten for asylum-seekers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2016, the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report identifying the San Francisco immigration court as one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7045,109133,73979,4508,61516,4507,9465,101,103,102,104,106,105,82980],"class_list":{"0":"post-243319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-department-of-justice","9":"tag-elena-hodges","10":"tag-immigration-advocates","11":"tag-immigration-court","12":"tag-immigration-judges","13":"tag-immigration-law","14":"tag-kevin-johnson","15":"tag-san-francisco","16":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","17":"tag-san-francisco-news","18":"tag-sf","19":"tag-sf-headlines","20":"tag-sf-news","21":"tag-u-s-government-accountability-office"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243319","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=243319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}