更新于：2026年4月19日 / 美国东部时间上午9:20 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
2024年10月27日，唐纳德·特朗普在竞选总统的集会上对听众说：“上任第一天，我就会启动美国历史上规模最大的驱逐计划。” 而他确实这么做了。特朗普总统第二任期伊始，便派遣军队和武装移民海关执法局（ICE）探员开展强力抓捕和大规模拘押行动，主要针对蓝领州民众。
总统任命克里斯蒂·诺姆为国土安全部部长，后者对驱逐行动的热衷以及借此造势的劲头，似乎与总统不相上下（有时甚至有过之而无不及）。再加上她将自己竞选活动2.2亿美元的开销算在总统头上，这或许触怒了白宫的几位核心人物。诺姆部长被解雇——这预示着政府论调有所转变，但驱逐任务并未改变。你只需看看移民法院里发生的一切就能明白。
前移民法官瑞安·伍德对我们表示，如今移民法官们都清楚政府的意图：“毫无疑问，他们要的是驱逐人数，是遣返行动。他们希望尽可能多地拘押人员，给整个系统施压。”他说道。
伍德在一年多前退休时，是中西部地区的助理首席移民法官。他本可以继续留任。他是在特朗普第一任期内获得任命的，否决的庇护申请数量远多于批准的数量。
但即便如此，他还是无法容忍自己亲眼所见的一切：“我见过在这个新政权下任期不长的法官，他们莫名其妙地被赶下法官席……他们正当庭宣读口头判决时，会收到一封邮件，或是有人在法官席上轻拍他们的肩膀说‘请跟我来’。”
当被问及这种情况在过去是否出现过时，伍德回答：“不，从来没有。我们从未见过这样的事情。”
美国的移民法院隶属于司法部，而非司法分支。 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
“我们不是‘驱逐法官’”
移民法院不属于司法体系，而是由行政分支的司法部监管。在过去14个月里，特朗普政府已经解雇、强制退休或迫使超过200名移民法官离职。
阿娜姆·佩蒂特去年9月被解雇。“这太打击人了，”她说。她放弃了收入丰厚的律师事务所合伙人工作，转而在弗吉尼亚州安嫩代尔担任移民法官。“从很多方面来说，这份工作曾是我的梦想。我为了这份工作做出了个人和职业上的牺牲，因为我相信自己能成为一名优秀公正的法官。”
“我担任法官的两年里，从未收到过同事或上级的任何负面反馈，”她说。“我的所有试用期考核都很优秀，（解雇）没有给出任何理由。”
当被问及内心认为自己被解雇的原因时，佩蒂特说：“我之前的职业背景是代理移民案件。我曾是乔治敦大学法学院的教授，教授基于性别的移民问题课程。我是一名女性，也是有色人种。”
杰里迈亚·约翰逊曾在旧金山担任移民法官八年。“我在法官席上说的最后一句话是对一家四口说的：‘你们获得了美国庇护，欢迎来到美国，’”他说。
约翰逊是在上一届特朗普政府时期获得任命的。去年11月他被解雇时毫无防备：“我登录电脑后看到了邮件通知，附带的信件显示我已被解雇，”他说。“不到30秒，我就被锁定了电脑系统，无法打印那封信。随后，我被护送离开了大楼。”
他说，始终没有得到被解雇的理由。
国土安全部去年12月在网上发布的一则招聘广告给出了相当明确的暗示：广告以虚构角色德雷德法官——一名未来世界的绞刑法官——为形象，文案写道：“向刑事非法移民伸张正义。成为驱逐法官。拯救你的国家。”
司法部网站上一篇题为“你来当法官”的页面承诺，“驱逐法官”的年薪最高可达20多万美元——若在“庇护城市”任职，还可获得25%的奖金。
司法部
约翰逊认为这则广告令人反感：“我第一次看到这则广告时，以为有点假，不是真的，可能是垃圾邮件。我们不是‘驱逐法官’；我们是移民法官。”
到目前为止，政府已经招募了70多名“驱逐法官”，其中大多数来自执法背景，几乎没有或完全没有移民案件经验。此外，为填补政府自身解雇法官造成的空缺，国防部长皮特·赫格斯瑟批准派遣军事律师（即军法署律师）担任临时移民法官，任期六个月。
伍德表示这是个问题：“我曾是陆军军法署律师，所以我对这些军法署律师抱有极大的好感和尊重。但这不是临时任务。移民法极其复杂，其复杂程度堪比税法。真正掌握相关法律并能做出公正合理的判决，需要一到两年的时间。但我们现在却从私人执业律师中抽调人员，只进行六个月的短期培训，而且显然有人放出话来：‘看清形势。如果你不能做出‘恰当’的判决，你就待不长。’”
司法部拒绝了我们的采访请求；但去年5月，总统在空军一号上简洁地总结了他的施政方针：“我们需要的法官，不会为每一名非法移民都安排审判。我们有数百万人非法入境，总不能为每个人都安排审判吧。那得有几百万场审判。”
全美共有60多家移民法院，涉及约350万起案件。“我们当时大约有600名移民法官，”佩蒂特说。“现在人数少了大约100到125名。”
当被问及政府提出的“大量无证移民需要大规模驱逐而非审判”的论点是否有合理性时，佩蒂特回应：“问题在于我们还有法律条文。国会制定了法律，规定了驱逐程序是什么，规定了庇护权是什么。行政当局不能在程序上绕过法治。”
除非他们无视法律。
“我认为移民法院正陷入混乱”
约翰逊目前担任全国移民法官协会执行副总裁，他说：“你在街头看到了混乱；我认为移民法院也正陷入混乱。不该有警察或ICE探员逮捕前来出庭的人，法庭外不该有泰瑟枪。”
这种情况会带来什么后果？“如果他们这么做是为了威慑前来法庭的民众，那么这个人就无法在法庭上为自己辩护，”约翰逊说。“如果他们甚至还没走进法庭就被逮捕，那么他们只能在遥远的拘留所为自己的案件辩护，可能远离家人、资源和律师。”
2025年8月26日，在纽约市雅各布·K·贾维茨联邦大楼，一名男子在离开移民法院听证会后被蒙面联邦特工拘留。纽约总检察长办公室已向美国南区联邦地区法院提起诉讼，要求阻止ICE在移民法院庭审期间于法院内拘押移民。 迈克尔·M·圣地亚哥/盖蒂图片社
目前约有6万名此类人员被关押在美国拘留所中，其中超过70%没有犯罪记录。
据美联社统计，已有3万名移民提交了所谓的人身保护令请愿书，称自己遭到非法拘留，因为他们未获得保释听证会。
“这些都是基本的正当程序问题，”伍德说。“美国公民被拘留，被空运到全国各地，还不准保释。这极其令人担忧。即便你想驱逐更多人，那也没问题，但我们应该遵守现行法律。如果我们不喜欢这些法律，国会应该修改它们。”
伍德表示，目前尚不清楚有多少美国公民被拘留。“真正的答案是，在某些案件中我认为我们并不清楚。有很强的诱因促使人们自愿遣返、放弃抵抗，甚至不咨询律师或法官就签署文件。我认为，多年后我们会发现一些极其恶劣的案例，证明我们没有尽到应尽的职责。”
一年前，寻求庇护者的成功率为31%。根据交易记录获取清算所（TRAC）今年2月的数据，这一比例降至前所未有的低点5%。美国为庇护申请者设立的法律途径几乎已经不复存在。
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
“我非常担忧，我们现在正在不经任何法律修改的情况下推行诸多政策，”伍德说。“我们仅凭行政命令和行政权力行事，无论是解雇移民法官还是下达驱逐令。这不是民主国家应有的治理方式。”
网络专题：丹尼尔·考迪洛谈移民法官与正当程序（视频）https://www.cbsnews.com/video/web-exclusive-daniel-caudillo-on-immigration-judges-and-due-process/
德克萨斯理工大学法学院吉姆和利亚·芬利移民法律诊所主任丹尼尔·考迪洛教授，也曾在得克萨斯州拉雷多担任移民法官。他与特德·科普尔一同探讨了当前移民法官面临的冲击，以及保护所有人正当程序的重要性。
Former judges speak out on Trump admin’s immigration court purges
Updated on: April 19, 2026 / 9:20 AM EDT / CBS News
At an Oct. 27, 2024 campaign rally during his run for president, Donald Trump told his audience, “On Day One, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history.” And he did. President Trump began his second term by dispatching troops and armed ICE agents to carry out aggressive arrests and mass detentions, mainly in blue states.
The president appointed as his Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, whose appetite for deportation, and publicity, appeared to match (and at times eclipse) his own. That, and pinning her promotional campaign’s $220 million price tag on the boss, may have ruffled a few important feathers at the White House. Secretary Noem was fired – signaling a change in tone for the administration, but no change in mission. You have only to check out what’s happening in our immigration courts.
Former immigration judge Ryan Wood told us there is no doubt among immigration judges these days as to what the administration wants: “Zero doubt, they want numbers, they want deportations. They want to keep as many people detained as possible, and stress the system,” he said.
When Wood retired a little more than a year ago, he was an assistant chief immigration judge in the Midwest. He probably could’ve stayed on. He was appointed during President Trump’s first term, and denied many more asylum applications than he granted.
But even so, he didn’t like what he was seeing: “I have seen judges that have not made it very long in this new regime, where they’ve been walked off the bench for whatever reasons … They’re in the middle of dictating an oral decision and they get an email, or they get a tap on the shoulder, literally on the bench, saying, ‘Please come with me.’”
Asked if that had happened in years past, Wood replied, “No, never. We’ve never seen anything like this.”
The nation’s immigration courts fall under the Department of Justice, rather than the Judicial Branch. CBS News
“We’re not ‘deportation judges’”
The immigration court is not part of the judiciary; it is overseen by the Department of Justice, which is in the executive branch. And over the past 14 months, the Trump administration has fired, retired, or forced out more than 200 immigration judges.
Anam Petit was fired last September. “It was crushing,” she said. She’d given up a well-paid job as a law partner to take on a job as an immigration judge in Annandale, Virginia. “It was a dream job for me in a lot of ways. I made personal and professional sacrifices to take that job, because I believed I could be a good and fair judge.
“In my two years of being a judge, I never received any negative feedback from colleagues [or] superiors,” she said. “All my probationary reviews were positive, and no reason was given [for my dismissal].”
Asked what her gut tells her about why she was fired, Petit said, “I came from a background where I represented immigrants previously. I was a law professor at Georgetown Law, where I taught on gender-based immigration issues. I am a woman, a person of color.”
Jeremiah Johnson was an immigration judge in San Francisco for eight years. “My last words on the bench were to a family of four: ‘You’ve been granted asylum in the United States. Welcome to the United States,’” he said.
Johnson was appointed during the last Trump administration. He was caught off-guard last November when he was terminated: “I logged onto the computer and I saw the email notification with attached letter indicating that I had been fired,” he said. “Within 30 seconds, I was locked out of the computer system, unable to print that letter. And then, I was escorted out of the building.”
He said no reason was ever given for why he was fired.
A recruitment ad from the Department of Homeland Security, posted online last December, offers a pretty broad hint: It features the fictional character Judge Dredd, a futuristic hanging judge, and reads: “Deliver justice to criminal illegal aliens. Become a deportation judge. Save your country.”
A page on the Justice Department website, headlined “You be the judge,” promises a salary up to a little more than $200,000 a year to be a “deportation judge” – and even a 25% bonus for taking a job in a “sanctuary city.”
Justice Department
Johnson said he found the ad offensive: “When I first saw the ad, I thought it was a little bit fake. It was not real. It might be spam. We’re not ‘deportation judges’; we’re immigration judges.”
So far, the administration has recruited more than 70 “deportation judges,” most from enforcement backgrounds with little or no immigration experience. Also, to fill the gap created by the administration’s own firings, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth authorized sending military lawyers (known as JAGs) to serve as temporary immigration judges for six-month rotations.
Wood says that’s a problem: “I’m a former Army judge advocate. So, I have a lot of affinity and respect for those judge advocates. This is not a temporary detail. Immigration law is extremely complex. It’s only rivaled by the tax code in complexity. It takes a year or two to really get up to speed and to understand the law and how to make good, fair decisions. But we’re pulling these people out of private practice for six-month details, and truncating the training, and there’s clearly been messages out there of, ‘Read the room. If you’re not gonna make “appropriate” decisions, you won’t be here for long.’”
The Department of Justice declined our request for an interview; but in May of last year, the president succinctly summed up his approach aboard Air Force One: “We need judges that are not going to be demanding trials for every single illegal immigrant. We have millions of people that have come in here illegally, and we can’t have a trial for every single person. That would be millions of trials.”
There are more than 60 immigration courts, for an estimated 3.5 million cases. “We had around 600 immigration judges,” said Petit. “And there are about 100, 125 fewer judges now.”
Asked if she sees any legitimacy to the administration’s argument that an overwhelming number of undocumented immigrants requires mass deportation rather than trials, Petit replied, “The issue is that we also have a statute. Congress has set laws, and it has established what removal proceedings are. It has established what a right to asylum is. And an administration can’t procedurally get around that rule of law.”
Unless they ignore the law.
“I think you’re seeing chaos in the courts”
Johnson, who continues to serve as executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said, “You’re seeing chaos in the streets; I think you’re seeing chaos in the courts. You shouldn’t have police or ICE agents arresting people who are coming into court, tasers being outside the courtroom.”
And what are the consequences of that happening? “If they’re there to send a chilling effect to the people coming to courtroom, then that person is prevented from having their day in court,” Johnson said. “If they’re arrested before they even get to the courtroom, then they have to defend their case miles away in a detention facility, perhaps away from their family, resources, lawyers.”
A man is detained by masked federal agents after leaving a court hearing in immigration court, at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, August 26, 2025 in New York City. The New York Attorney General’s Office asked the U.S District Court for the Southern District of New York to block ICE from detaining immigrants inside of courthouses as they attend their court hearings at immigration court. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
There are about 60,000 such people currently being held in U.S. detention. More than 70 percent of them have no criminal record.
According to a count by the Associated Press, 30,000 immigrants have filed what’s known as a habeas corpus petition, claiming illegal detention because they haven’t been granted a bond hearing.
“These are basic due process issues,” said Wood. “American citizens are taken into custody. They’re flown across the country and held without bond. That’s extremely concerning. Even if you are wanting to deport more people, that’s fine, but we should follow the laws that are in place. And if we don’t like the laws, Congress should change them.”
Wood said it is not clear how many American citizens have been detained. “The real answer is that I don’t think we know on some of these cases. There’s such strong incentives to self-deport and to give up and to sign papers without talking to counsel or even talking to a judge. And I think we’re gonna learn, years from now, about some really egregious examples of where we didn’t do what we were supposed to be doing.”
A year ago, 31 percent of those seeking asylum in this country were successful. According to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) for this past February, that number hit an all-time low of 5 percent. The legal pathway for asylum seekers to the United States is approaching zero.
CBS News
“I’m very concerned that we’re doing a lot of things right now without any changes to the law,” said Wood. “We’re doing it by executive order and executive power alone, whether it’s firing of immigration judges, or deportation orders. That’s not the way a democracy is supposed to be run.”
WEB EXTRA: Daniel Caudillo on immigration judges and due process (Video)https://www.cbsnews.com/video/web-exclusive-daniel-caudillo-on-immigration-judges-and-due-process/
Professor Daniel Caudillo, director of the Jim and Leah Finley Immigration Law Clinic at Texas Tech University School of Law, also served as an immigration judge in Laredo, Texas. He talks with Ted Koppel about impacts on immigration judges today, and the importance of protecting due process for all.
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