MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump is focused on reshaping the federal workforce, and that includes the immigration courts. These judges who are part of the civil service are key to Trump's policy of mass deportations. NPR immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo has been focusing on this, and she's here now to tell us more. Good morning, Ximena.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So we've seen the president bring in like-minded people across federal agencies. How has this played out in the immigration courts?
BUSTILLO: There's one clear example, and it's this man named Matthew O'Brien. He became an immigration judge under President Trump's first term, and these are judges inside administrative courts, so they're inside the Justice Department, not the judiciary, as you said, and our civil servants, and they decide whether someone the government wants to deport should or has a reason to stay. But he was dismissed within his two-year probationary period, which bled into the first two years of the Biden administration. After leaving the bench, O'Brien went to work for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. That's a legal organization that defends stricter border policies. And in that role, he testified before Congress on issues related to immigration policy and the merits of birthright citizenship. Here he is testifying before the House Oversight Committee last year.
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MATTHEW O'BRIEN: And I listened to thousands of asylum applications when I was an immigration judge. Very few of the ones that I heard had anything approximating a valid asylum claim.
BUSTILLO: As an immigration judge, he denied about 88% of asylum claims, which was higher than the average in the court he served at the time. Then, as of May of this year, he showed back up on the immigration court's website, as NPR was the first to report. And he has a promotion. He is working at the Annandale Immigration Court in Virginia as an assistant chief immigration judge. That, amongst various responsibilities, means that he is responsible for recommending whether a judge at that court should stay or go.
MARTIN: What does his return tell us about President Trump's approach to these courts?
BUSTILLO: O'Brien's return shows that the strategy of bringing like-minded civil servants back to the benches that decide the fate of both immigrants and judges, immigration judges are already in a bit of a weird place. They're seen as this neutral arbiter weighing an immigrant's case to stay in the U.S., but they're also under the direct authority of the attorney general and the president. But immigration lawyers told me that they fear courts could soon no longer be those neutral arbiters. I spoke with Jennifer Ibanez Whitlock from the National Immigration Law Center, and she fears immigration courts are being pressured to move through more cases and favor deportations.
JENNIFER IBANEZ WHITLOCK: They might as well be in the same component as the enforcement and removal operations.
BUSTILLO: Spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly of the immigration court's agency told me that all judges must decide matters impartially, based on the law and cases before them.
MARTIN: So beyond O'Brien, what does your reporting indicate about how immigration courts have changed since Trump took office?
BUSTILLO: We know Trump is looking for ways to avoid going through immigration courts at all. Hundreds of immigration courts personnel, including staff and judges, were fired or voluntarily resigned within a few months of the start of the presidential term. And there's pressure on judges to move through their caseloads faster, and that includes denying asylum requests without holding hearings or dismissing the cases on spot. The administration is also encouraging immigrants to not use the courts at all. There are fliers advertising the idea of, quote, "self deportation" on the walls of waiting areas in these courts across the country, and this is all an effort to streamline more deportations.
MARTIN: That is NPR immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo. Ximena, thank you.
BUSTILLO: Thank you.
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