Trump Fires San Francisco’s Top Immigration Judge

The Trump administration fired San Francisco’s top immigration judge on Tuesday, marking the seventh firing in the office since January and adding to concerns that the White House is targeting judges who are unwilling to bend to its desires.

Loi McCleskey, who has served as the court’s assistant chief immigration judge for just over a year, was terminated by the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review — the body that adjudicates immigration cases and administers national law — according to an internal email shared with the office’s staff and viewed by KQED.

The move follows a national trend, as more than 100 immigration judges have been fired since Trump took office, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“I want to let you know that my employment with EOIR has been terminated effective today,” McCleskey told the office team via email. “It has been an honor to serve as your ACIJ and to work alongside such a dedicated and talented group of professionals.”

In her role, McCleskey supervised all of the judges in San Francisco’s office, which has a record of granting asylum at a higher rate than the national average, according to data collected by Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Attorneys told KQED that the discrepancy between San Francisco’s and rates in other jurisdictions is likely due to a multitude of factors, including that asylum seekers in San Francisco are more likely to have representation and required to meet different standards than in some other states.

Her firing, and those of six other judges in the office, have prompted local attorneys and former staff in recent weeks to suspect that the federal government is targeting adjudicators who are more likely to grant asylum or have spent their careers defending immigrants.

“It appears to be completely ideologically based,” former San Francisco immigration judge Dana Leigh Marks said of the firings last week. “It appears to be very results-oriented, targeted towards individuals who think more independently and are willing to listen to both sides when a case is presented to them rather than just accepting the government assertions.”

McCleskey granted asylum to just more than 72% of the asylum seekers whose cases she heard, according to TRAC data. That figure is significantly higher than the countrywide average, which has hovered below 50% in most recent years, but about the norm within the Bay Area court.

The three San Francisco judges with the highest asylum-granting rates have all been terminated in recent months, including Judge Shira Levine, who was fired last week.

Levine said that McCleskey was well respected and had navigated the difficult role of heading an immigration court in recent months with “competence and grace.”

“She truly was the glue holding the San Francisco court together as political appointees and ideologues in Washington were doing their best to dismantle and tear apart the court,” Levine told KQED on Tuesday.

Levine said she’s worried that the administration is trying to create chaos in immigration courts and get rid of people who “play by the rules.”

In August, the DOJ lowered the prerequisites to qualify for temporary judge positions, removing the requirement that candidates have prior immigration experience, and the following week, the federal government authorized 600 military lawyers to serve in those roles.

“The Trump administration, in terminating ACIJ McCleskey, is seeking to replace upstanding, experienced, knowledgeable, fair judges with people who possess none of those skills but people who may come from the military and will follow orders,” Levine said.