Since the start of the second Trump administration, more than 100 immigration court judges have been fired across the country. The remaining ones have new directives from the Justice Department to speed up deportations.
The U.N. is sounding the alarm, saying the U.S. may be in violation of international law.
"It's not just that they were downsizing; they were replacing. And the way they replaced them was to put out recruitment calls for not immigration judges, but deportation judges," Margaret Satterthwaite told the I-Team.
She is the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, monitoring judicial independence worldwide. She says the firing of immigration judges by the Trump administration, including judges in Chicago, amounts to a politically motivated capture of what should be independent decision-makers.
"It's a real concern to see this system going much further away from independence than even it may have begun with, is that these are life or death matters for many people," Satterthwaite said.
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Immigration judges are part of the executive branch, not the independent judicial branch. But Satterthwaite told the I-Team people who are seeking asylum from persecution or torture are entitled to an independent authority under international law.
"It requires that the individual not be a partisan, that they be allowed and capable of making decisions without interference or undue threat or pressure," Satterthwaite said. "So, those binding obligations on the U.S. are highly relevant here, and I'm very concerned that they may be violated."
The I-Team spoke with former Chicago immigration judge Carla Espinoza, who says her former colleagues are under pressure from the administration.
"They want to speed up deportations, and so they want to move those cases along, maybe without regard to giving them time to contest the federal litigation, seeking their freedom, their release," said Espinoza, with EZG Immigration Law.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released new numbers this week highlighting the results of large-scale deportations, claiming more than 350,000 people have been removed from the U.S. since October of last year.
"Having more than 100 or even maybe 200 individual immigration cases come before one judge in a matter of a few hours," Satterthwaite said. "So, that's a grave concern for due process and for a fair trial."
Satterthwaite says the 14th Amendment affords due process to all people in the United States, not just U.S. citizens. The I-Team reached out to the Department of Justice for comment, but has not heard back.