- The Justice Department this week dismissed a sixth San Francisco immigration judge since President Donald Trump took office, continuing what appears to be a pattern of removing adjudicators with backgrounds in immigrant defense or higher asylum approval rates.
Judge Shira Levine, appointed to the court in October 2021, was terminated without explanation, NBC Bay Area reported.
Milli Atkinson, who heads the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Bar Association of San Francisco, said Levine received no reason for her removal, though the decision did not come as a complete surprise.
Since April, five other San Francisco immigration judges have been dismissed, including Judges Chloe Dillon and Elisa Brasil, who held two of the court’s highest asylum grant rates, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Dillon told KQED she learned of her firing through a three-sentence email on Aug. 22. She said she discovered it after returning to her office from a years-long asylum hearing, where she had already indicated her ruling and hoped to issue a decision that day, KQED
Dillon said she spent 90 minutes gathering her belongings, returning federal property, and handing off her 6,000-case docket without knowing who would take it over
