Judges describe a campaign of firings and interference which threatens the system's independence. On a Thursday morning last month, Patrick O'Brien, a federal immigration judge, walked into his courtroom in downtown San Francisco. He was scheduled for a master-calendar hearing, a roll call, essentially, to get cases ready for trial. O'Brien was wearing a matte-black robe that seemed to absorb the artificial light overhead. He took his seat, scanned the room, and angled himself toward a computer monitor. The court was leanly staffed. There was a judicial clerk but no bailiff or stenographer. Opposite the judge were tables for the prosecution--the Department of Homeland Security--and for the respondent, a succession of immigrants who were applying for asylum. A Spanish interpreter appeared as a faceless box on a big screen. About ten people, all Latino, sat in wooden pews, gripping folders full of esoteric documents.

Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, R-Fla., joins'America's Newsroom' to discuss Florida's crackdown on illegal immigrant truck drivers after the death of three Americans. In an apparent effort to address the millions of backlogged immigration cases, the Justice Department made a rule change to allow attorneys without immigration law experience to act as temporary immigration judges. The DOJ's Office of Immigration Review published the rule in the federal register Thursday, which removes the requirement that temporary immigration judges have substantive prior experience in immigration law. Jurists who are approved by Attorney General Pam Bondi may serve as immigration judges, which represents a tide change after more than 100 judges were fired or bought out by the Trump administration earlier in 2025. The DOJ hopes that by expanding the net as to who may hear immigration-related cases, the more than three million case backlog may finally be assuaged.

Welcome to the Fox News' Politics newsletter, with the latest political news from Washington, D.C. and updates from the 2024 campaign trail. Nearly 1 million illegal immigrants are staying in the U.S. "indefinitely" after their cases were dismissed or closed, or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to file the necessary documentation, according to a new House Judiciary Committee report released Thursday taking aim at a "sort of quiet amnesty has become a staple of the Biden-Harris Administration's immigration courts." "Through administrative maneuvering at both the Justice Department and DHS, the Biden-Harris Administration has already ensured that nearly 1 million illegal aliens can remain in the United States without the possibility of deportation--and that trend shows no sign of stopping," the report by the House majority on the committee, first obtained by Fox News Digital, says. When illegal immigrants are encountered, they can be put into removal proceedings by which they will eventually face an immigration judge to have their case decided. There are around 700 immigration judges across the U.S., and they currently face a backlog of millions of cases after the historic crisis at the border.