A former San Francisco immigration judge says the Justice department fired her two days after reporting that ICE agents had unlawfully detained an unaccompanied minor who had just appeared in her courtroom, a new report shows.
Chloe Dillon said the timing of her termination last spring felt “too coincidental” since no other San Francisco judges were fired that day and her removal wasn’t part of any mass dismissal, MS NOW reported Thursday.
What’s more, Dillon and she says she had been warned months earlier about the White House.
“The White House is watching this issue,” Dillon recalled being told. “Like, do you really want to push this? The White House is watching.”
According to her whistleblower complaint, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California, the trouble began last April, when San Francisco immigration judges were directed to grant any ICE request to move a case to a different court venue.
Dillon objected, arguing the policy was unlawful and could undermine a noncitizen’s right to counsel, and her supervising assistant chief immigration judge then warned her that “the White House” was tracking the issue.
“Prior to the Trump administration, I can’t imagine hearing something like ‘the White House is watching you’ from my ACIJ,” Dillon said. She said she was never told who at the White House was monitoring the rulings.
Dillon described the code immigration judges are supposed to follow: “You don’t make decisions based on what the president or what someone else wants you to decide. 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 Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Because immigration judges sit within the executive branch under the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, they lack the job protections of federal judges.
The administration has fired at least 135 of them since President Donald Trump returned to office, and the Merit Systems Protection Board has ruled the attorney general may remove them at will, a decision now under appeal.
Dillon is among several fired judges challenging their dismissals, some alleging discrimination based on gender, age or ethnicity.
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