Late Monday, four senior officials at the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review—which is in charge of U.S. immigration courts—were sacked by the Trump administration.
Sheila McNulty, the chief immigration judge, Mary Cheng, the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s interim director, Jill Anderson, the office’s senior counsel, and Lauren Alder Reid, its head of policy, were among the officials dismissed. They weren’t political appointees; they were all civil servants.
The decision to fire my career Senior Executive Service colleagues and me without cause or warning has left us stunned and deeply upset. Regardless of the administration, we have devoted our professional lives to protecting the rule of law. According to Alder Reid, we will not stop working for justice.
According to one of those sacked, the officials, who had decades of expertise overseeing the country’s overworked immigration courts, were not given any prior notice of the terminations. More than 700 immigration judges work for the Justice Department, making decisions about the legality of allowing migrants to stay in the United States after applying for asylum. Over 3 million cases are backlogged in the court system.
A request for comment on the Trump administration’s and the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s decision to fire these officials was not immediately answered.
The dismissals followed President Donald Trump’s signing of a number of immigration-related executive actions on Monday night. The Day 1 orders and firings come after Trump pledged throughout the campaign to implement mass deportations and reform the US immigration system as soon as he took office.