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An individual is walked in handcuffs by federal authorities into a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office in the John E. Moss federal building in downtown Sacramento on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.<\/p>\n
DANIEL HEUER<\/p>\n
dheuer@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
Sacramento\u2019s immigration court has undergone one of the most dramatic shake-ups in the country, with six of the seven judges serving there at the start of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term fired in the past year.<\/p>\n
The overhaul is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reshape the nation\u2019s immigration courts as it pursues an aggressive deportation agenda less focused on publicized enforcement operations. As of this week, the administration has dismissed about 125 immigration judges out of roughly 700 in place when Trump returned to office.<\/p>\n
The changes in the capital region have been particularly striking. Sacramento\u2019s immigration court now has three judges, down from seven in September 2025. That represents one of the largest percentage declines in the nation, according to an NPR analysis earlier this year.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s extreme in Sacramento,\u201d said Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which is an affiliate of the National Association of Immigration Judges.<\/p>\n Immigration judges decide whether people should be deported or granted a form of immigration relief, though they are not part of the judicial branch. They work for the Department of Justice and can be fired with little notice or without reason.<\/p>\n The dismissals began less than a month into Trump\u2019s second term in some parts of the country. All six Sacramento firings occurred in the last year.<\/p>\n The first three \u2014 Alison Daw, Loreto Geisse and Print Maggard \u2014 were fired in September 2025. Denise Hunter was terminated in December. David Neumeister and Vikram Badrinath were fired this summer.<\/p>\n The administration has added two judges to the Sacramento court over that time.<\/p>\n Judge Joseph Weiner was transferred from the West Los Angeles Immigration Court and Judge Bayleigh Pettigrew was appointed in May as part of the largest class in the agency\u2019s history. In its announcement<\/a>, the department said the new judges were part of an effort to \u201creestablish an immigration judge corps\u201d focused on restoring the rule of law.<\/p>\n The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that runs the immigration courts at the DOJ, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the reason for the dismissals or additions.<\/p>\n Fired judges had higher rates of granting asylum<\/p>\n All six of the Sacramento judges fired appear to have been targeted, at least in part, because of their record. Each one had higher rates of granting asylum and lower rates of denying immigration relief compared to the national averages, according to Syracuse University\u2019s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.<\/a><\/p>\n The administration has focused on other courts with a history or reputation of granting relief at higher rates. After firing the majority of San Francisco\u2019s judges, the DOJ closed the immigration court.<\/p>\n \u201cThe approval rate for asylum seems to be a factor,\u201d said Blake Nordahl, the director of the immigration clinic at University of the Pacific\u2019s McGeorge Law School.<\/p>\n As of June, the national asylum grant rate had fallen to 5.5% \u2014 down from 32% at the end of former President Joe Biden\u2019s term.<\/p>\n Jeremiah Johnson, vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said asylum rates appear to be one factor, but the dismissals cannot be attributed to a single reason.<\/p>\n He, Nordahl and Biggs pointed to other patterns among judges who have been removed including women, those appointed during the Biden administration, judges with backgrounds representing immigrants and people with Hispanic-sounding last names.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing is this administration and the executive wanting to dismantle the immigration court system,\u201d said Johnson, who was an immigration judge in San Francisco before he was fired last year. \u201cIt\u2019s this attack of independence, and so when you fire experienced judges on all levels or all different grant rates, that\u2019s sending a message.\u201d<\/p>\n Long-serving judges were let go<\/p>\n In Sacramento, Maggard\u2019s firing has drawn particular attention because of his lengthy career in the immigration court system. He served as chief immigration judge for one year during the Obama administration and later was deputy chief immigration judge during Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n Geisse was another longtime Sacramento judge. She had served on the court since 2004 and previously worked as a trial attorney for the Justice Department.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are people who were not so-called woke judges,\u201d Nordahl said. \u201cI didn\u2019t see them that way. I saw them as public servants who were dedicating the rest of their career to upholding due process and fair adjudication.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n