Immigration judge among 20 fired by Trump says “caseload will balloon” as courts already deal with backlog

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Immigration judge among 20 fired by Trump says “caseload will balloon” as courts already deal with backlog

A woman who was expecting to hear hundreds of immigration cases a year – but was fired by President Trump the week before she was supposed to start – said she expects the immigration “caseload will balloon.” 

In Boston and other cities, immigration cases stacked up as migrant crossings along the U.S. southern border surged. While crossings have since come down, the case numbers will keep adding up, said Kerry Doyle, who anticipated hearing up to 700 cases a year regarding asylum, permanent residence and removal – until she was fired.

Immigration courts are already dealing with a backlog of about 4 million cases.

“Don’t forget that cases come into the system, not just from the border, but from the existing people that are in the United States,” Doyle said. “So as you ramp up removal … they’re getting put in front of the immigration judge, so that caseload will balloon.”  

The Trump administration enacted a pause on all immigration applications filed by migrants from Latin America and Ukraine allowed into the United States under certain Biden-era programs, citing fraud and security concerns, according to an internal memo obtained by CBS News and two U.S. officials.

Days earlier, the president fired at least 20 immigration judges – Doyle among them. 

CBS News asked the Department of Justice why Doyle and other judges were terminated. A spokesperson declined to comment on personnel matters. 

Doyle, however, said she expected this to happen because those who were fired “were sort of the last group coming in under the Biden administration.”

Doyle was an outstanding critic of the immigration system when she was an immigration attorney. That landed her on a conservative-backed group’s online watchlist of political appointees. 

But Doyle said she took an oath to uphold the Constitution and do her job, not be an advocate like she used to be. 

“That’s what I used to do when I was with the client in the courtroom,” she said. “Now I’m the decision maker and you need to listen to both sides and you need to weigh the case under the law and then act fairly to make decisions.”

Camilo Montoya-Galvez

contributed to this report.

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Jason Allen

Jason Allen is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas/Fort Worth. He was previously a reporter with CBS News Texas. Allen has reported live during numerous severe weather events nationally for CBS News, including Hurricane Harvey in Texas and major storms in Florida, Louisiana, and California. His original reporting on a dispute between an order of nuns and a Catholic Bishop led to international headlines. The Texas Medical Association awarded him for his work revealing the emerging fentanyl crisis in North Texas during the pandemic. He also followed the ******* of Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth from the initial shooting to the end of the trial. Allen was also one of the first reporters at the scene of the West fertilizer plant explosion. He is a graduate of Trinity Christian College in Illinois.

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