A former immigration judge filed a first-of-its-kind whistleblower complaint against the Justice Department on Thursday, alleging that she was fired two days after she reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “had unlawfully detained an unaccompanied minor who had just been in her courtroom,” according to a complaint filed in federal court Thursday.

Chloe Dillon, an immigration judge in San Francisco until her dismissal last spring, also alleges that she had been warned months earlier that the White House was tracking her rulings on a new Trump administration policy that she had found unlawful.

“I really felt that it was my duty, knowing that this was happening, to say I can’t be part of what I feel like is an illegal action,” Dillon told MS NOW. The timing of her firing, she said, seemed “too coincidental”: No other judges in San Francisco were fired that day, nor was her termination part of a mass dismissal.

The policy at issue had come down last April, when San Francisco immigration judges were told that any and all requests by ICE to move a case to a different court venue should be granted. Dillon pushed back, arguing that the directive was contrary to the law and could hurt a noncitizen’s right to counsel.

Dillon’s supervising assistant chief immigration judge then “informed her that ‘the White House’ was watching the issue and cautioned her against resisting the directive,” states the complaint, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California.

Recalling the conversation, Dillon said she told her superior that she believed “this policy violates the law.” Her supervisor, as she summarized it, told her to be careful: “The White House is watching this issue. Like, do you really want to push this? The White House is watching this.”

“Prior to the Trump administration, I can’t imagine hearing something like ‘the White House is watching you’ from my ACIJ,” Dillon told MS NOW, referring to her supervising assistant chief immigration judge.

Dillon was never told who at the White House was tracking immigration judges’ decisions.

“You don’t make decisions based on what the president or what someone else wants you to decide,” Dillon said, describing the code of conduct immigration judges have long followed. “You make the decision based on what the law is, what the evidence is in front of you, and the application of those facts and that evidence to the law.”

The White House and DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.

Unlike federal judges, immigration judges sit within the executive branch, working for the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. The administration has reportedly fired at least 135 of them since Donald Trump returned to the White House, and has maintained that the president and attorney general have the full constitutional authority to remove them.

The argument has so far held up. In a similar case involving other fired immigration judges, the Merit Systems Protection Board ruled that the attorney general may remove immigration judges at will because they are “inferior officers” and that the constitutional removal power overrides statutory job protections. That decision is being appealed.

Critics — including fired immigration judges, immigration lawyers and Democratic lawmakers — have argued that this structure threatens judicial independence, making these judges susceptible to political pressure. Since the start of Trump’s second term, the administration has fired judges and weakened and narrowed due-process protections for people facing deportation. It also has repeatedly pressured judges to rule in its favor. It now refers to them as “deportation judges” and has issued recruitment materials invoking Judge Dredd, the authoritarian comic-book lawman who serves as judge, jury and executioner.

Even as it fired judges, the department recently swore in its largest-ever class of new ones. Then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at the time that the administration “is committed to re-establishing an immigration judge corps that is dedicated to restoring the rule of law in our nation’s immigration system.”

Dillion is unconvinced that is what is happening. 

“I think there’s undue pressure from the top on how to rule,” she said. “And I believe that there are also directives that make it difficult for them to preside over cases fairly and impartially.”

She is one of several fired immigration judges to challenge their terminations during the Trump administration. Others have filed lawsuits against the Justice Department, alleging that they were fired because of their gender, age or ethnicity.

“This is a slippery slope. Where does it end?” Dillon said. “The point of the immigration court is to offer people a fair proceeding. The point is to do justice. The point is to allow people to present their case and have their case decided on the facts and the law, and not have it be a predetermined outcome. It’s just about affording fairness, which is what people think America stands for.”

The post ‘The White House was watching’: Fired immigration judge alleges retaliation by DOJ appeared first on MS NOW.

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