San Francisco Immigration Court Shuts Down After Judge Purge

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery Street permanently closed on May 1, 2026 — eight months earlier than initially announced — after the Trump administration fired or forced out nearly all of its judges, leaving approximately 117,000 asylum cases in limbo and sending shockwaves through the nation’s immigration judiciary system.

Once one of the busiest immigration courts in the country, the San Francisco court had 21 judges when President Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025. By the time it closed, only two remained. The rest had been fired, retired, or resigned amid what critics describe as a deliberate campaign to dismantle courts perceived as favorable to asylum seekers, according to AP News.

A Court Built on a Different Philosophy

San Francisco’s immigration court was unusual from its inception. It was one of the first in the nation to hire judges with non-prosecutorial backgrounds — many had previous experience working with immigrants at nonprofits or defending them in court. This created a judiciary that was markedly more favorable to asylum seekers. From 2019 to 2024, nearly 75% of petitioners in San Francisco received some form of relief, compared to 43% nationwide, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

“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,” said Jeremiah Johnson, a former San Francisco immigration judge who was fired in November 2025 and now serves as executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

The Purge: By the Numbers

The dismantling of San Francisco’s court is the most dramatic example of a nationwide purge of immigration judges. Across the United States, 115 judges have been fired since April 2025, at least another 100 retired or were reassigned, and 46 judges were offered buyouts, according to data from the National Association of Immigration Judges. The total number of immigration judges dropped from 754 to approximately 600, as reported by Mission Local.

San Francisco lost 14 judges to firings since April 2025 and 7 to retirement or resignation — more than any other city in the country. By contrast, Houston and Miami, which have asylum grant rates of 11% and 20% respectively, lost fewer than a handful of judges each.

Chaos at Concord

The vast majority of San Francisco’s cases have been transferred to the Concord Immigration Court, about 30 miles east, which opened in 2024 specifically to help relieve San Francisco’s backlog. But Concord has been hit by its own wave of firings. A courthouse that had 11 judges at the start of 2025 is now down to 5 to 7 judges, and it already had a caseload of 60,000 cases before absorbing San Francisco’s caseload.

“Logistically, it’s just going to be a nightmare,” said Milli Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Bar Association of San Francisco, in an interview with KQED. “It is going to be chaotic for several months, where people are not going to know if they have a hearing scheduled, where the hearing is scheduled, who their judge is, if their case is going to be moved.”

Courthouse Arrests Compound the Crisis

Compounding the chaos, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have begun arresting immigrants outside courtrooms where they have mandatory hearings. The practice has caused hundreds of people to not show up for hearings, leading to deportation orders in absentia.

“Of course people are scared to go to immigration court because of the arrests — and closing down San Francisco Immigration Court isn’t going to help,” said Jordan Weiner, an immigration lawyer in San Francisco and interim executive director of La Raza Centro Legal, as reported by NPR. “That doesn’t give a lot of confidence in the system.”

A Deliberate Strategy?

Critics see the closure as part of a multi-pronged strategy to restrict asylum access. The administration has fired judges perceived as too liberal, authorized up to 600 military lawyers from the JAG Corps to serve as temporary immigration judges, and shifted hiring language from “immigration judges” to “deportation judges.”

Dana Leigh Marks, a former San Francisco immigration judge who retired in 2021 after 35 years on the bench, described the administration’s actions as “almost like a smash-and-grab robbery.”

“What this current administration has been doing is almost like a smash-and-grab robbery,” Marks told KQED. “They’re not following any of the established rules… providing flimsy and transparent justifications, or just disregarding the rules.”

The Human Cost

For the tens of thousands of asylum seekers whose cases are now in flux, the consequences are deeply personal. Cases have been pushed back to 2027 or even 2030, leaving people in prolonged legal limbo and vulnerable to deportation while they wait.

One of Judah Lakin’s clients — an Oakland-based immigration attorney who also teaches at UC Berkeley School of Law — was provisionally granted asylum by a judge who was fired before signing the decision. The case was transferred to a second judge, who was also fired. Now on their third judge, the client is still waiting.

“The ground is constantly shifting underneath your feet, whether it’s judges being fired and hearings getting canceled, whether it’s your clients getting arrested, whether it’s getting denials on things that used to be standard and routine,” Lakin told the Associated Press. “I think that’s on purpose. That’s by design. It’s part of the strategy.”

What’s Next

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has described the closure as a cost-saving measure, citing the decision not to renew the lease at 100 Montgomery Street. A smaller court at 630 Sansome Street remains open under the administrative purview of the Concord court. But with the nationwide immigration court system facing a backlog of 3.8 million cases and the number of judges continuing to shrink, the path forward for asylum seekers in Northern California — and across the country — remains deeply uncertain.

As Johnson, the fired judge, put it: “You’re weakening the rule of law by not having immigration judges; you’re having deportation judges.”

Reporting contributed by the Associated Press, NPR, Mission Local, KQED, the San Francisco Standard, and the Guardian.