Executive Office for Immigration Review

It's shifting sands indeed.

We are, if you are like me, signed up to receive notifications from EOIR and USCIS, it kind of feels like getting bombarded and the sands beneath our feet are shifting constantly indeed.

So let's go ahead and review some of these changes, particularly those that have occurred this year in 2026.

Next slide, please.

There are about 12 countries that are affected.

And incidentally, I did... receive a motion to recalendar from DHS removal proceedings for a Venezuelan client whose TPS just expired thanks to this decision.

So if you have clients with administratively closed EOIR cases, be prepared to deal with motions to recalendar now that TPS is being canceled.

Next slide, please.

That's like the wild thing about this area of law is that it's not really like a judicial system because at the end of the day, the attorney general can come in and notwithstanding what the law is, can just make up a whole new precedent.

And just to drive the point home about these judges and these courts, there has been massive turnover in the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the immigration judges that are the trial court, considered like the trial level judges.

This is the court of first instance.

When you're in deportation proceedings and you go into immigration court, there has been a massive turnover in these court courts.

I mean, it makes it no better than like Maoist China in the 50s or something.

So I was very curious about where is this coming from? And I looked at all of the OPPMs, or I guess they just call them PMs, Policy Memoranda, EOIR, from the beginning of this administration.

And sure enough, it was one from last September that basically puts forward the metrics or the quotas for immigration judges.

They call them performance metrics, but they're really expectations that immigration judges resolve.

Let's go on to the next slide.

All right, what are mega masters? So in this context that I just talked about, EOIR, which stands for Executive Office for Immigration Review, decided that it was a good idea to schedule dozens of people for master calendar hearings, which are the preliminary hearings in immigration court.

And EOIR also thought that it would be a good idea to include non-citizens with scheduled final hearings in this process.

So this means that non citizens who had already had their master calendar hearing in the past, and we're scheduled for a final hearing.

We're suddenly and out of nowhere being taken back a step back out of nowhere being scheduled for master calendar hearings again.

It's as if EYR is trying to force in absentia orders, knowing how difficult it is to undo or to reopen that in absentia order.

Next slide.

So Mobile Pathways and Backlog are two platforms that analyze complex federal databases, such as those from EOIR, to track system trends, support practitioners like yourselves, and bring transparency to immigration law.

Judge Karla Espinosa's termination email came as she sat on the bench in Chicago's immigration court July 11th.

In the span of a few days, two more female colleagues got the same email from the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the division of the Department of Justice that oversees immigration courts.

I worry the EOIR has lost its mission.

The I Team broke the story of Assistant Chief Judge Jennifer Peyton's firing last month.

Okay, but why is this happening? How did the Trump administration manage to pull this off? Well, why don't we go ahead and break it all down? The Trump administration has been setting forth a series of anti-immigrant, anti-fraud policies.

According to filings from the recent Executive Office for Immigration Review, since January of 2025, the Trump administration has successfully fired 137 far-left immigration judges who had been stalling the ongoing deportation efforts, replacing them with 349 brand-new America-first immigration judges.

The Trump administration's deportation machine continues to grow stronger.

So the Trump administration is ramping up the deportation process by getting rid of left wing immigration judges who had been undermining the deportations, trying to bog them down legally, replacing them with brand new right wing America first immigration judges.

A lot of the immigration judges that Obama put in that were slowing Trump's administration policy down are being removed.

Yeah, according to filings from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, since January 2025, the Trump administration has successfully fired 137 far-left immigration judges who had been stalling the ongoing deportation efforts, replacing them with 349 brand new America First immigration judges.

uh, the Trump administration's deportation machine continues to grow stronger.

And this is why I'm happy.

So where were these people then told to go?

So one is the, actually the headquarters for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, um, which is the agency that does immigration courts in Falls Church, Virginia.

But typically, that building doesn't do in-person, like, courtroom style hearings.

And the second one is, uh, actually the headquarters for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in DC.

Take a look at this.

According to filings from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, otherwise known as the EOIR, Since January of 2025, Trump's first month back in the White House, the Trump administration has successfully fired 137 individual far-left immigration judges who had been stalling, intentionally stalling and undermining the ongoing deportation efforts.

Now Trump has replaced them with with 349 brand new America First immigration judges to help make these deportations crank.

So to be clear, over the last 18 months or so, Trump has fired 137 left-wing America Last immigration judges.

Here is the interesting thing.

These judges technically aren't federal judges.

No, they are immigration judges working for the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

What office for immigration review? The Executive Office for Immigration Review inside of the Department of Justice, meaning they are executive branch employees.