The number of active U.S. immigration judges has fallen by roughly 25 percent over the past year, dropping from approximately 700 to around 550, according to data analyzed by NPR and reported by the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The reductions reflect a combination of politically-driven firings by the Trump administration — including a wave of approximately 20 judges dismissed on February 27 — alongside related staffing cuts to legal assistants and advisers that were accelerated by the Department of Government Efficiency. Some immigration hearing dates have been pushed as far as 2028.
NPR, which tracked the dismissals independently, found that immigration courts started 2026 with fewer than half the judges they had a year prior in some jurisdictions. PBS NewsHour interviewed a former immigration judge who described the effect as a "death spiral" for the courts: fewer judges means longer waits, which increases the backlog, which in turn increases pressure on remaining judges. The EOIR also lost more than 400 legal assistants and administrative specialists, according to NPR's data.
Fox News and Townhall have also reported on the backlog, though with different framing. A Townhall report from February noted the irony that immigration courts — meant to process deportation cases — are being slowed by the very cuts intended to enforce stricter immigration enforcement. Fox News has focused on the Biden-era surge in caseload as the root cause of the backlog, with DOGE cuts identified as an exacerbating factor rather than the primary driver.
The total pending caseload now exceeds 3.7 million cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Experts from immigration law and policy backgrounds across the political spectrum have noted there is "no scenario where firing immigration judges will decrease the immigration court backlog," as Newsweek reported. The practical consequence is that immigrants — whether seeking asylum or facing deportation — may wait years for their cases to be resolved.
Left-Leaning Emphasis
- NPR and PBS NewsHour emphasize that DOGE-driven cuts are actively worsening a humanitarian crisis, with asylum seekers and migrants left in years-long legal limbo with no resolution date.
- PBS frames the cuts through the perspective of a fired immigration judge who describes a cascading institutional failure, with no mechanism to recover the lost expertise.
Right-Leaning Emphasis
- Fox News and Townhall locate the root cause of the backlog in the Biden administration's immigration surge, treating DOGE cuts as an unfortunate but secondary factor in a court system that was already overwhelmed.
- Right-leaning outlets note that eliminating judges appointed under the previous administration is consistent with Trump's mandate to reshape federal immigration policy, even if the short-term effects include delays.
Sources
- NPR Feb 23
- PBS NewsHour Mar 19
- Townhall Feb 25
- NBC News Mar 19