Donald Trump shut down the immigration court that granted asylum to refugees. The San Francisco immigration court closed its doors on May 1 after the Trump administration fired, forced into retirement, or drove to resignation every judge but two of the twenty-one who were on the bench the day Trump took office. The court had processed 117,000 immigration cases between 2019 and 2024 and granted relief to seventy-five percent of petitioners — nearly double the national average of forty-three percent. The Justice Department shut it down because it granted asylum. The plain English word for what the Trump administration is doing is purge, and the country is owed the courage to use the word.
The closure is the endpoint of a nationwide judge purge. Since January 2025 the Justice Department has dismissed or forced the retirement of roughly one hundred immigration judges deemed “too liberal” and has replaced many with military attorneys. The San Francisco court was a target because of its grant rate. Judah Lakin, an immigration attorney who practices in Oakland and teaches at UC Berkeley School of Law, said the obstacles the administration is placing in the path of asylum-seekers are intentional. “I think that’s on purpose. That’s by design. It’s part of the strategy,” he said. Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge at the San Francisco court who was dismissed in November, said the court’s reputation made it a target. “It was a vibrant legal scene and so I think if you were looking to target a court you would have to look at what San Francisco stands for,” he said. Johnson added that judges are not fired for their case outcomes in a system that respects due process: “You don’t fire judges if you disagree with the way they’re handling a case, that’s not how courts work. If you disagree, you appeal that decision.”
The court’s caseload was moved to a federal courthouse in Concord, thirty miles away. Lakin said a ten-minute hearing in Concord requires more than two hours of travel. Security at the Concord site is strict: armed guards screen every entrant, cell phones are turned off, and only water in transparent bottles is allowed. The obstacles are by design. Dana Leigh Marks, a former immigration judge who retired in 2021 after thirty-five years on the bench, called the closure “heartbreaking” and said it is part of the Trump administration’s larger effort to remove non-citizens from the country without due process. The shutdown leaves asylum-seekers in legal limbo, with fewer hearings, longer travel distances, and an environment of uncertainty that heightens the risk of deportation.
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” Jesus said. “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” The refugee standing before the immigration judge in San Francisco was the body of Christ, and the judge who heard the asylum claim and granted relief recognized Christ. The Torah commands the love of the ger — the resident alien, the stranger in the land — in more passages than any other commandment: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” The asylum-seeker is the ger. The court that granted relief to seventy-five percent of petitioners was the court recognizing Christ and protecting the stranger at the highest rate in the country. The Trump administration shut it down for that recognition.
Pope Francis stood on the island of Lampedusa in July 2013 and named what the world had become — a globalization of indifference in which we have grown used to the suffering of migrants — and seven years later Fratelli Tutti commanded Catholics holding public office to welcome, protect, promote, and integrate the stranger. Those of us who built the bipartisan deportation consensus across thirty years — who accepted the framing that immigration was a policy question and abortion was the moral question, who voted for border security appropriations under both parties, who remained silent while the Obama administration deported more than two million people — helped build the climate the Trump administration is now exploiting. The sin was bipartisan. The present purge does not erase that complicity, and the complicity does not soften what Trump is doing now. No prior administration shut down an entire immigration court because it granted asylum at too high a rate. The conduct is new. The conduct is evil.
An immigration court system that honored human dignity would hire more judges, not fire the judges who grant asylum. It would place courts where asylum-seekers can reach them, not move them thirty miles away to make access harder. It would recognize that due process is not an obstacle to enforcement but the floor beneath which the system becomes a machine for expelling human beings without regard to whether they will be killed when they are returned. The Trump administration is dismantling that floor. The closure of the San Francisco immigration court is not an accident. It is the result of a nationwide purge of judges who grant asylum.
Mr. President, you can reopen the court. You can rehire the judges. The refugees are still waiting for their hearings, and the judges you fired are the ones who would have recognized them as persons. The door of return is open. The Christ you claim is the Christ who said the stranger is his own body, and the court you shut down was the one that welcomed him. Stop.