Trump Admin Dismisses Another Immigration Judge in San Fransciso

The Justice Department has dismissed yet another San Francisco immigration judge — the sixth since President Donald Trump returned to office — as his administration pushes forward with restoring integrity and consistency to a system critics say was hijacked by open-borders activists during the Biden years.

Judge Shira Levine, who joined the bench in October 2021 after a career in left-wing immigrant advocacy groups, was abruptly terminated this week without explanation, NBC Bay Area reported.

Her firing follows the recent removals of Judges Chloe Dillon, Elisa Brasil, Jami Vigil, and others — nearly all of whom had unusually high asylum approval rates and histories of working on behalf of illegal immigrants. According to data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), Dillon and Brasil were among the most generous judges in the country, approving asylum in more than 95% of their cases, compared to a national average closer to 36% as of last October.

Dillon told KQED she discovered her termination through a brief email after returning from an asylum hearing where she had already announced her ruling. She packed up her office in under two hours, leaving behind a 6,000-case docket.

The trend, advocates admit, is unmistakable: judges who spent their careers pushing pro-migration agendas are being dismissed, while those more aligned with enforcing the law remain.

“They are specifically targeting one end of the spectrum because they don’t like those results; they don’t think that people should be granted asylum essentially,” Dillon complained to the outlet.

Former immigration judge Dana Leigh Marks, herself a critic of the Trump administration, called the firings “results-oriented” and “ideologically based,” claiming they unfairly target those “willing to listen to both sides.”

But Trump’s supporters argue the opposite: for too long, activist judges have been undermining immigration enforcement by rubber-stamping dubious asylum claims, often filed by coached migrants who were guided by activist attorneys.

A cornerstone of Trump’s 2024 campaign — which delivered a decisive defeat to Kamala Harris — was mass deportation and the restoration of border sovereignty. The firings underscore that the administration is serious about fulfilling that pledge.

The Justice Department has also recently expanded the pool of temporary immigration judges, no longer requiring prior immigration law experience and authorizing 600 military lawyers to step into the role — a move critics say ensures a stronger, more disciplined bench.

Levine, Brasil, Dillon, and the other dismissed judges had all built careers inside progressive nonprofits or pro bono immigrant defense work. For example, Levine worked at Centro Legal de la Raza, while Vigil spent nearly a decade as court-appointed counsel for migrant families.

Their removal signals a fundamental shift: immigration courts are no longer a safe haven for ideological activists in robes but are being restored to their intended purpose — upholding immigration law and protecting American sovereignty.