National Association of Immigration Judges

Today, I was joined by Judge Mimi Sancov.

She is a former longtime immigration judge and the former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

And what are we talking about today? Well, folks, on this show, we have had many a immigration attorney on the show, people who deal with removals, status adjustments, and we have discussed at length the real dangers of immigration judges not being independent of the executive.

And today, we have a real honor of hearing from somebody who worked through multiple administration, who has seen the changes to the independence of the judiciary, who can speak with intelligence about the consequences of having a judiciary that is not independent, how that impacts due process, how that impacts outcomes for people, and ultimately, why after the Trump administration, the second one, had DOGE decide to cut federal employees, why Judge Sancov decided enough was enough.

But tell us what that change was like, some of the biggest changes that you saw from Obama to the first Trump administration, and then we will continue on into the second one, where we see you leave the bench.

Well, we really fought hard during the, um, first Trump administration through the, uh, through...

I did through my role as in leadership at the National Association of Immigration Judges.

We fought hard to, um, measure the way in which judges were going to be evaluated because then when the first Trump administration started, they changed and introduced these performance metrics.