The Trump administration is publicly cracking down on illegal immigration.
Behind the scenes, the White House is also fighting a war against legal immigration. How the administration is working to grind immigration to a halt.

Guests

David Bier, director of immigration Studies at the Cato Institute.

Also Featured

Chloe Dillon, former immigration judge, San Francisco Immigration Court.

Jeremiah Johnson, former immigration judge, San Francisco Immigration Court.

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Transcript

Part I   

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: David Bier joins us today. He’s Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute. David, welcome to On Point.

DAVID BIER: Thanks for having me on.

CHAKRABARTI: And by the way, I do appreciate how in your Twitter/ X bio you explicitly say Libertarian, not left. Point well taken.

Okay. So let me ask you this big broad question. Is there a way for us to estimate the number of legal immigration applications pending in the United States right now?

BIER: No. Because really, right now we are in an information blackout by this administration. The last information that we have about the backlog is really from before major policy changes were enacted.

We are in an information blackout by this administration.

David Bier

You’re looking all the way back into June data, where already at that point it was 12 million applications for various benefits, all different types of things. Everything from work authorization to renewals of status in the United States and elsewhere. But that gives you the scale of how bad it was as a starting position.

Gotten much worse in just the first six months of this administration. And now, we’re in a situation now where so many people are being blocked by various policies that we really don’t know the scale of what we’re dealing with.

CHAKRABARTI: So let’s be a little even more forensic about this.

When you said in June, it was June of 2025.

BIER: June of 2025. That’s right.

CHAKRABARTI: So at least 12 million cases. Legal immigration applications in the system at June of 2025.

BIER: That’s right. Yep.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. And so we’re not just talking about asylum cases, right? This is, I don’t know, beyond Visas, student Visas. Is it like H-1B?

Is it all of them?

BIER: Yeah. This is a total picture. This is everything that you could apply for through our immigration system. And yeah, it includes everything from, and it’s all, it’s the pending applicants, so it’s pending applications that are going through that process.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So this is basically the entire, I know I’m like really beating this to death, but the numbers matter. The entire legal immigration system, legal, capital L, in the United States, at least of June of 2025, there were 12 million cases in the system. Okay. Do we know how many of those right now are actually being processed, or that the DHS and USCS are actually moving them through the system?

BIER: Again, it’s a very difficult number to try to figure out. I have looked into it as many different ways because they don’t actually publish and never have published data that would give you each individual country by country application by application-level information. But as best as I can tell, you have about 2 million people, applications, that over the next year would have been approved, if not for these various policies that have been put in place by this administration to block people from approval. And it’s actually much worse than that.

Because even the people who get denied, they’re still entitled to that information that, you know, and a reason for why they’re being denied.

But over 2 million of the applications would’ve been approved over the next year, if not for all of these various policies that have been put in place to prevent people from getting status or various immigration benefits and Visas.

CHAKRABARTI: So please tell me if I’m oversimplifying. Because I don’t want to do that, but has the legal immigration system in the United States, is it grinding to a halt right now?

BIER: For, yes, absolutely. Look, it was already in free fall as a result of various actions taken by Congress, inactions, the prior administration’s policies, the policies under the first Trump administration really accelerated things. But this administration has basically just said, and it really comes from the top.

All of these policies, you have to start with the president’s statement. Really that we want to ban, according to the President, all third world immigration. And so that’s the sort of marching order, broad overview of what they’re trying to accomplish with these various policies that prevent people from getting through the pipeline and they’re carrying it out.

Those are the marching orders from the top. And so these agencies are finding ways, every legal and illegal way, to constrain legal immigration to the United States.

CHAKRABARTI: So the headline is Trump administration blocking legal immigration to the United States.

BIER: Absolutely. And look, this is not a surprise.

This should not be a surprise.

CHAKRABARTI: But it is still.

BIER: It’s a surprise to a lot of people, but like the first publication that I published under this administration in January of 2025 was a prediction. And I don’t like doing predictions because that’s not what I’m in the business for, but it was a safe bet.

That they were going to cut legal immigration more than they cut illegal immigration. And that has already happened. That is, and it’s not even close. If you look at border patrol arrests, they’re down maybe 20,000, 30,000 per month. The total number of people entering on long-term statuses, humanitarian statuses, refugee status, other permanent statuses, is already larger than that.

You’re talking about on, in just the first month, they cut about 40,000 entries through the parole programs. That are a legal avenue for people to come to seek safety in the United States. You had them completely eliminate the refugee program except for white South Africans. So that was 125,000 over the course of the year eliminated, permanent people who would’ve been on a path to citizenship, a complete shutdown of legal entry for asylum seekers, as well as in recent months, this expansion of bans on various immigrant Visa categories.

So entire countries being banned. Right now, it stands at about 92 countries, which account for about half of all the immigrant Visa applicants in the world, now face a ban. It’s about 325,000 people outside the United States.

And about a quarter of a million people inside the United States are being blocked as a result of these various actions that they’ve taken to ban what they call third world immigrants.

CHAKRABARTI: But banned for applying for any kind of Visa. We’re not just talking exclusively asylum or refugee, right? Just like any kind of Visa.

BIER: So the vast majority of the people affected by these policies are immediate relatives of U.S. citizens. So they are family of U.S. citizens, over 100,000 of them are the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents of the United States who are being blocked over the next year, just the next year, of being able to immigrate legally to reunite with their immediate relatives.

The vast majority of the people affected by these policies are immediate relatives of U.S. citizens.

It’s just incredible to even describe, many people react in shock at the mere notion that anyone would take it this far.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so I promise you, David, we’re having you on today, because I really want to dig dispassionately into, not the legislation, but the executive orders, et cetera, almost agency by agency throughout the rest of the show to get a sense of exactly what you’re talking about.

But I have to admit that, yes, you’re right. Like the Trump administration has talked a lot about shutting down asylum seeking and refugee status in this country. But it’s this second part that you’re talking about that really surprised me. I will admit. And I only ran into it because you testified in front of Congress last month.

And so we have a little bit of tape here. This is David Bier in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 10th, talking about these very policies in the Trump department of Homeland Security and how they’re stalling in processing legal immigration applications. Massive restriction on, as David said, 92 countries right now, and here is an interaction between David and Republican Louisiana Senator John Kennedy.

KENNEDY: I think I heard you say that some people, some folks who’ve come to our country, and are trying to get status, to say, to state, have applied to the Department of Health, DHS, and they’ve paid money. DHS is doing nothing.

BIER: Oh, that’s right. Yep. They’re sitting on their applications, not tossing.

KENNEDY: That’s a pretty bold statement. How many people, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I don’t know how many people we’re talking about.

BIER: About half of the immigrant flow right now. So how many 90, 90 countries are affected by the —

KENNDY: How many people?

BIER: State Department ban.

KENNEDY: How many people is that?

BIER: Well, it’s at least 300,000 abroad and probably twice that when you consider the people are in the U.S.

KENNEDY: So you’re saying that 300,000 folks have gone to DHS to seek some kind of permanent status or semi-permanent status to stay at least 300,000 and they paid money to DHS and DHS has done nothing. Is that what’re saying?

BIER: That’s right. Yeah.  They’re sitting on their applications. They’re putting them in the trash.

KENNEDY: Who at DHS is doing this?

BIER: Oh it’s Joseph Edlow. He’s in charge of it. He came up with this policy.

KENNEDY: Who is he?

BIER: He’s the head of USCIS.

CHAKRABARTI: David, do you buy what Senator Kennedy is trying to say there that he had no idea?

BIER: He voted to confirm Joseph Edlow to be the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS, the agency that’s responsible for processing applications for status and various immigration benefits here in the United States. So it shouldn’t be a surprise. And of course, Edlow, and it’s in combination with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Who’s in charge of processing Visas abroad. So the two of them have come together both of them, of course, confirmed by the Senate into their positions to throttle legal immigration in a way that we’ve really never seen an administration take it as far as this administration has, targeting the spouses of U.S. citizens.

This is incredible.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: David, so let’s get down and dirty into individual agencies starting with USCIS, right? That’s either U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. You had mentioned that it’s Director Joseph Edlow has a policy that he has instituted at USCIS. What is that policy?

BIER: The policy is a ban or freeze.

They’re calling it a freeze, but it’s really a ban on processing any immigration benefits on behalf of about 40 countries, 39 plus the Palestinian Territories. Those applications are just not receiving any adjudication, not even in a denial.

So this includes everything from someone who’s just arrived in the United States and might be applying to adjust from a student Visa to H-1B status or some high skilled guest worker program, to someone who’s been in the country literally decades, who’s applying for naturalization to become a citizen. In fact, there were people who were going to their naturalization ceremonies who were blocked from attending as a result of this policy. And so they had gone —

CHAKRABARTI: So wait. They’ve gone through the whole process. They’ve taken the test; they’ve passed their civics questions.

The adjudicator says, yes, go and actually raise your right hand. And they are blocked from being at those ceremonies?

BIER: Absolutely. So it’s the last step. They’ve gone through absolutely everything, they’ve done absolutely everything that the government requires. They paid all the money, hundreds of dollars per application for this, and then they’re blocked.

And there’s no explanation given. It’s just you were born or are a citizen of the wrong country. You’re on the ban list, the blacklist, and we’re not going to process you. And the ostensible justification is security. It’s always about security. But many of the, again, many of these people had lived here for decades in the United States, many years had not committed any crimes.

They were vetted before they got here. They’re vetted before they can get to that naturalization ceremony. And yet they’re still blocked from receiving what the law entitles them to.

CHAKRABARTI: How did USCIS go about determining which countries of origin, let me put it that way, would fall under this essential ban?

BIER: Yeah. So just to back up, President Trump has also assigned a proclamation that bars legal entry and Visas to these same 40 countries, and that proclamation, only if on paper at least, only affects people and applications outside of the United States, because that’s the only legal authority that he has under the law, is to block people from coming into the United States or traveling to the United States.

He doesn’t have authority to discriminate based on country of origin for people who are already here or even Americans who are sponsoring someone else, that they should not be discriminated a against based on the statute that he is using. Nonetheless Edlow used that.

Joseph Edlow, head of USCIS used that as a justification for this memo that says that we’re going to freeze all applications for people from these countries. So how did Trump decide on these 40 countries? No one knows. It is totally ad hoc. Basically, whatever excuse you could come up with, he’s thrown into his proclamation. There’s really no rhyme or reason, there country’s on the list that don’t make sense to be on the list based on what he said about security or willingness to help the U.S.

And then there are countries that are off the list that probably should be if you’re looking at some level of consistency here. And so we don’t really know the explanation. Many people have speculated that it’s the 40 countries that refuse to work with the United States and its mass deportation campaign in some way.

And that’s the underlying logic that would tie all of it together. And if you’re willing to work with them, then you won’t be on the ban list.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. But hang on here, David. I have the January memo here from USCIS, January 1st, 2026 policy memorandum that puts forth this new policy as you’re describing it here.

And look, I’m looking at it right now, and it says, yes, everything that you’re saying, that’s what it says. But then it has a section on exceptions to the adjudication hold, okay? So technically, even according to this ban, if you’re the following, your application should still be processed.

For example, benefits requested by people who are athletes or members of athletic teams participating. Oh, look, of course in the World Cup Olympics or other sporting events, if you’re applying for a surgeon designation. Okay, let’s see. Then there’s also, oh, here we go. Number one, if you’re applying for form I-90, application to replace a permanent resident card, green card, okay.

Form N-565 application for replacing your citizenship document. And then there’s Form N-600. Lots of naturalized citizens know that one. That is the application for certificate of citizenship. But you just said that they’re stopping people from actually taking the oath.

BIER: Yeah. So that’s the N-400.

This is a certification, is just the certificate that proves that you are a citizen, the actual naturalization application is being blocked. And yeah, it’s a confusing mess as everything is with our immigration system. But yeah, you can, if you’re already a citizen, yeah, you can get proof of that.

If you’re already a legal permanent resident, yeah, you can replace your card and carry on. But if you don’t have any benefits or you’re applying for a new benefit. No, we’re not going to allow that. And those are the applications that we’re talking about. It’s the vast majority of our immigration system blocked for these 40 countries.

CHAKRABARTI: And we are also even talking about, as you said, spouses of U.S. citizens.

BIER: Yeah. So if you look at it, this is the largest single category of immigration is spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, and they’re also being blocked. There is one exception for Visas. The State Department allowed adoptees to continue on.

So if you’re an adopted child of a U.S. citizen, you get through, but if you’re a biological child of a U.S. citizen, you’re still blocked. If you were already adopted, I should clarify. Only the people who are being adopted get this exception. If you are already adopted, there’s no exception. If you’re a stepchild, you’re not exempt.

So it’s a very incoherent policy. Really the exemptions are as narrow as you could think of in order to maximize the exclusion.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So there’s another thing that you said I want to dig into a little bit more. It’s not just familial applications, immigration applications we’re talking about here.

You also mentioned H-1B applications. Now those have been in the news a lot, right? Because of fights between Silicon Valley and the White House, et cetera, et cetera. But also just more generally high skilled workers who are applying to come to the United States. Now, there was a point in time, not that long ago, when the president himself said, No. Those are the kinds of immigrants that we want to come to this country. Is that just not true anymore?

BIER: Not if you’re from the wrong country. So when it comes to immigration policy under this administration, there’s a huge distinction between different countries and really, yes, they want a broad … on everyone, but if you look at it, so just looking at immigrant Visas, again, these are for people who are permanent residents.

About a quarter of all the employment-based immigrant Visa applicants are now banned from coming to the United States under this new policy. And this is not, doesn’t rise to the level of a majority of the parents of U.S. citizens being banned. But still, it’s a significant restriction.

Over 13,000 individuals banned as a result of this action. And it’s just one of many restrictions and they all add up to really millions of people being affected.

CHAKRABARTI: So I’m going to just jump in here frequently, David, and forgive me. The quarter of the work-based immigration applications that you’re talking about.

But these are people who, at least, most, if not all of them, are being sponsored by actual employers in the United States, right? So the country is saying, no, corporation X, you think the best person to work at this job is from Egypt, but you can’t have them. That’s what you’re saying.

BIER: This could be U.S. hospitals hiring an Iranian doctor to come and work in some underserved area of the United States.

I was just in contact with someone who’s, someone who’s working in the health field, who’s from Iran, who’s now banned. So yeah, it’s a huge number, broad set of individuals who are affected by this policy.

CHAKRABARTI: It’s interesting that you brought up health care, because I know there’s physician groups out there that are really concerned about it for exactly the reason that you said, that there’s a lot of underserved places in this country where a large fraction of the physicians working there are indeed foreign born. Okay. So that’s USCIS. Just scraping the surface there. You had also mentioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s like larger blanket policy across the entire State Department.

How would you describe what that is?

BIER: Again, there’s two different policies here. The Trump administration’s proclamation or the President’s Proclamation that affects 40 countries and then there an addition, Secretary of State Rubio is in charge of implementing that proclamation.

And then in addition to that, you have a 75-country ban that the secretary put in place just on a whim. Really the totality of these, when you add them together, add up to about 92, 93 countries who are banned under this policy.

CHAKRABARTI: The secretary put this out on a whim. What do you mean?

BIER: There’s no basis to it. There’s not a underlying proclamation or executive order. There’s no regulation. It’s just, it’s a press release that’s on the State Department website that says we’re just not processing any of these applications for 75 countries. And they list the countries.

It’s three sentences long. There’s basically no justification whatsoever provided beyond, we think these people are going to come and take the wealth of America. It’s just, it’s literally that bare. So you’re attacking basically nothing more than a one sentence statement that says, we’re not going to process you if you apply, or at least we’re not going to grant or deny your application.

We’re just going to put it in a file somewhere indefinitely. And yeah, this is a really extreme policy to be adopted without any kind of deliberation. No regulation, no notice in public comments. Obviously, there’s no underlying law here. They’re just putting out these statements that really fundamentally change our immigration system on a whim.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, David, we actually did obviously reach out to the Trump administration, and we have a statement here from USCIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser and USCIS says that they are responsible:

For administrating America’s lawful immigration system and under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem we are safeguarding the American people by thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens.

And it goes on to say, and this is the relevant part:

USCIS has paused all adjudications for aliens from high-risk countries. While the agency works to ensure that all aliens from these countries are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible, USCIS will not take any shortcuts that put our communities at risk.

The safety of the American people always comes first.

Okay, so what’s wrong with that? People should be thoroughly vetted before being granted any kind of immigration status to this country, David.

BIER: Absolutely. I agree. And they were, the idea really is that we’re not going to allow our own adjudicators, our own consular officers and USCIS officers to take a look at these applicants and see on an individual basis whether they have proved that they are not a threat. The burden of proof in all of these applications is on the applicant to prove their eligibility. It’s not on the government. So if what they are saying is we do not trust our own people, they are our own administrative officials to properly adjudicate these applications.

And so we’re just not going to let them even look at them to decide whether this person has proved their burden. And instead, we’re going to rely on vague assertions of threat and risk that based on entire nationality, what the actions of some foreign government, that has nothing to do with whether the person who’s in front of me is actually a threat and has demonstrated that they are not a threat to the United States.

CHAKRABARTI: Not even take a look. So it’s like, there’s the file, but the USCIS adjudicator just can’t even look at it. You had said in that piece of testimony that we heard earlier to Senator Kennedy, that maybe sometimes they’re even throwing them in the trash.

Was that just some verbal filigree from you or do you, have you heard from adjudicators?

BIER: No. I think that was a little bit of a rhetorical flourish on my part. But this is where, yeah, sometimes they actually just, they do deny some of the applications under the president’s proclamation.

And that is, they’re not actually looking at the application. They’re looking at, you’re born here. Here. Okay, I’m going to throw it in the trash now. And really the remarkable thing about this policy is that they’re still taking fees from these people. They’re not telling them when they apply, actually, you’re not eligible.

And it’s really incredible. They’ve actually put out on their website and in subsequent guidance that has come out in court litigation that we’re not going to, we’re instructing our officers actually not to take a look at these applications and say, Hey, wait, you’re from this country. No, you shouldn’t apply.

You shouldn’t waste your money on an application that I’m gonna put in the trash.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. And in some cases, it’s never been cheap to apply for immigration to the United States. And in some cases, I’m seeing here for that H-1B Visa, it can now cost $100,000.

BIER: So you have to pay a $100,000 fee just to get considered for the H-1B Visa if you’re outside of the United States.

And that’s in addition to all the other fees, so you are already paying thousands of dollars in fees just to apply for the H-1B Visa. Even for a spousal visa, it’s going to knock you back $3,000 or $4,000 depending on whether you’re inside the United States or outside.

And yeah, so it’s incredibly unfair to take that money and then not process their applications.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: I want to set up a conversation about what’s happening in immigration courts in the U.S. And first let’s listen to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. She testified before a House subcommittee on December 11th, 2025, and you’re going to hear Representative Dan Goldman of New York really grilling Secretary Noem about how the department’s going about deporting legal asylum seekers.

GOLDMAN:  Immigrants with ongoing asylum applications are legally in this country.

NOEM: There are individuals in this country that have applications that —

GOLDMAN: And they are legally here because it’s a lawful pathway. Right.

NOEM: It’s a lawful pathway.

GOLDMAN: Okay. So if your department then deports anyone with an ongoing asylum application, you are violating the law, correct.

NOEM: Joe Biden left us with,

GOLDMAN: I’m not asking about Joe Biden. I’m asking you a specific question.

NOEM: Million cases.

GOLDMAN: If your department deports anyone with an ongoing asylum application, you are violating the law. Is that correct?

NOEM: It was greatly violated when they allowed one.

GOLDMAN: I’m asking you, I’m asking you.

NOEM: — Granted asylum application.

GOLDMAN: Why are you filibustering? Why can’t you answer the question? It’s a simple question.

NOEM: Your president –

GOLDMAN: If your department deports anyone follow the law with an ongoing asylum application, you are violating the law. Isn’t that correct? NOEM: The asylum program was broken under the last.

GOLDMAN: Okay, Mr. Chairman, I’ll reclaim my time. She’s not answering the question and but the obvious answer is that yes. If you follow a lawful pathway, asylum is a lawful pathway. If you have an open asylum case, you are here lawfully.

CHAKRABARTI: So that’s Representative Dan Goldman of New York and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, December 11th, 2025.

So that brings us to the question of what is happening in the nation’s immigration courts. Okay. California’s busiest immigration court is in San Francisco, which also makes it one of the busiest in the entire country. Despite that fact, the number of immigration judges in the San Francisco Court has dramatically decreased from 21 judges at the start of last year, 2025, to just four judges at the start of this year, 2026.

That’s because 13 of them have been fired by the Trump administration. As of January 2026, the San Francisco Immigration Court is currently facing a backlog just in one court of more than 120,000 cases.

CHLOE DILLON: I was working through my lunch hour. I was working into the early evening, occasionally taking work home, and then especially towards the end of my time on the bench, I was definitely working nights and weekends in order to keep up with the workload and in order to ensure that cases were resolved efficiently and as quickly as possible.

CHAKRABARTI: Former immigration Judge Chloe Dillon was fired by the Trump administration in August of last year. Her colleague, Judge Jeremiah Johnson, was fired in November.

Their dockets at the San Francisco court were only growing when they were terminated.

JEREMIAH JOHNSON: More cases were being added to my daily load because more people were being detained. There were fewer judges across the country. By the time I had been fired, over a hundred immigration judges had been fired. So you’re seeing less immigration judges, more detentions, arrests not only in the courtroom, but arrests that happened throughout the country.

These were not people who had any significant criminal convictions. A lot of the people that I saw in the detained setting were people who had been stopped and detained for minor traffic violations, had no serious criminal convictions, or even simply no criminal activity at all.

You want to hear those cases take priority, hear them fast because of the cost of detention, but there’s a liberty interest at stake, and so you prioritize those cases.

CHAKRABARTI: In 2018 in the first Trump administration, the Department of Justice sought to address the growing backlog that already existed at the time. So DOJ imposed a quota requiring immigration judges to finish 700 cases every year or face disciplinary action. Now, for most judges that amounted to at least three cases per day, already considered a nearly impossible number to manage.

Dillon and Johnson’s caseloads in San Francisco were even higher. They were expected to hear six every day.

DILLON: Realistically, it’s not possible to decide six cases a day. Having a hearing and actually hearing the evidence and listening to the evidence on both sides and making a decision after hearing the evidence and all the arguments that the only way to decide six cases in one day is if you are either summarily granting the case or summarily denying at least a couple of those cases.

JOHNSON: So you saw a backlog in cases being pushed out, continuously being pushed out. People had been waiting years for their day in court, had showed up to my court. I had to reschedule their case because I was hearing those detained cases first.

These are people who have been waiting years. We were not allowed to reset the case or let them know ahead of time that we would not be able to hear the case. We were encouraged to complete all six cases that day, but of course that was, as Judge Dillon indicated, was just simply impossible if you were going to go ahead and have a full and fair hearing.

CHAKRABARTI: Now in October of 2021, the Biden Justice Department eliminated the quotas, but fast forward to the second Trump administration. The backlog of immigration cases nationwide is now more than 3 million cases. So in September of 2025, just last year, the Executive Office for Immigration Review created new performance metrics requiring immigration courts to adjudicate cases even faster. Once again, here’s former judge Chloe Dillon.

DILLON: I do think that the way that the system has been set up incentivizes. And I have concerns about how much it incentivizes resolving cases quickly by simply denying the case on a legal rule. For example, a legal rule that has been newly implemented in 2025 by this administration, in order to complete cases and resolve the backlog in that way.

CHAKRABARTI: As we mentioned earlier, the Trump DOJ has fired more than half of the judges that once heard cases in San Francisco. Judge Johnson says that nationwide, approximately 100 immigration judges have been fired, leaving the courts more overwhelmed than they were before, and many of the fired judges were actually meeting the quotas and deadlines set by the Trump administration.

JOHNSON: Judges across the country have been fired for no cause, no reason given. And some of them are completed well over the national average of cases and well over those quotas. But my firing was for no cause given simply the theory that the Attorney General can simply choose based on Article II of the Constitution to terminate a person for any reason.

DILLON: Like Judge Johnson, I was not ever told that my performance was a reason for my firing. I was actually never given a negative performance review or told that I was not completing cases efficiently and fairly.

CHAKRABARTI: Like the others, Judge Dillon says she was fired with no notice in a three-sentence email that cites Article II of the Constitution.

That gives the president authority to remove any executive branch official. Now, of course, look, immigration case backlogs are not good. No one’s saying that’s a good thing, but the backlog ironically did give most individuals coming before the immigration court for asylum cases, time to prepare what was sometimes thousands of pages of documents that are required to support their case, and it also gave them time to be extensively vetted by the Department of Homeland Security.

DILLON: I would say that anyone who has ever presented an asylum case or represented one of the parties in an asylum case would tell you that asylum cases routinely involve evidence that numbers in the hundreds and sometimes in the thousands of pages. From the Department of Homeland Security side, there was not just one, but multiple forms of background checks that the Department of Homeland Security would do in preparation for that hearing, including even talking to Department of State.

Assets in their home country of origin to find out what the Department of State, what the consulate and that home country knows about the person.

CHAKRABARTI: And that long process, that process of deep vetting, paperwork, background checks, hearings, so much more. It’s really at stake because the main San Francisco Immigration Court.

As of this point, is set to close completely by next year.

JOHNSON: The day I was fired was not a typical day. I had one case in the afternoon, and the DHS attorney was well prepared. It was a family of four indigenous persons from Guatemala, and we had a full hearing, and their case was granted. They were granted asylum in the United States.

So my last words on that bench were, you’ve been granted asylum in the United States. That decision is final. Welcome to the United States.

DILLON: I want to point out that you have many mixed status families and mixed status communities in this country. When we talk about the safety of United States citizens, which United States citizens are we talking about?

CHAKRABARTI: Now you just heard from former U.S. immigration judges, Chloe Dillon and Jeremiah Johnson. David Bier, look, in the case of immigration courts, we’re talking about people who are already in the United States. Wouldn’t it be in the Trump administration’s best interest to actually, I don’t know, hire more immigration judges rather than firing them so that the cases can be appropriately and speedily adjudicated.

BIER: From their perspective, no, because really what they’re concerned with are the judges who are more likely to grant asylum or the courts like in San Francisco that may have a perception of being more likely to grant relief. Because if you grant asylum, then they can’t deport you. And that’s really the main goal of this entire administration is preventing people from getting a status that would allow them to come to the United States or stay in the United States.

We already saw how they stripped temporary protected status from over a million people, stripped parole status from over a million people. And so this administration’s goal is not necessarily to have a functioning, orderly process for people.

This administration’s goal is mass deportation and anyone who would grant asylum to someone is an obstruction to that goal. And of course, the biggest way in which they want to deal with the backlog is not by providing people their day in court, but actually taking away that right to present your case in court.

And they needed the cooperation of the judges in order to allow that to happen. And so their whole, their main program with the immigration courts now is have the immigration judge dismiss the case and allow ICE to immediately take custody of that person, put them in detention, and then deport them from the United States quickly using special authorities that they claim to have.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. In the last couple of minutes that we have, David, I want to come back to something you said earlier. Even though this is really surprising, the numbers and the extent of this war on legal immigration that the Trump administration is waging, we shouldn’t be surprised because they’ve been quite transparent about their goals from the start.

For example, here is White House Chief of Staff, or sorry, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Fox News back in 2019.

MILLER: You cannot conceive of a nation without a strong, secure border. It is fundamental and essential to the idea of sovereignty and national survival to have control over who enters and doesn’t enter the country.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So Stephen Miller would argue, Hey, we’re not shutting down all legal immigration to this country. If you’re from Iceland, you’re good to go. If you’re from Germany, you’re good to go. If you’re from Australia, you’re good to go. What’s the harm in being more selective?

BIER: Really the harm is to us as Americans, and it comes in the form of our inability to, look, if I’m marrying a U.S. citizen from one of these, or an immigrant from one of these countries, as a U.S. citizen, that should be my right.

We shouldn’t have the government get in between a person and the person that they love and want to live with here in the United States unless there is actual proven security risk from bringing that person into the United States or allowing them to come. So that’s an issue of fundamental rights.

And of course, there’s the economic implications of shutting off the United States from the world. These people come and they contribute enormously to the United States. We’ve calculated that over the last 30 years they have paid in $14.5 trillion more in taxes than they’ve received in benefits.

And that’s all immigrants put together. But certainly, the immigrants who are being targeted by these policies also contribute enormously to the United States.

CHAKRABARTI: We have a minute left, David and I have to say, when I first said, oh, we should reach out to this guy at Cato, he’s really talking about some quite disturbing things.

I was surprised that this isn’t bigger news. To be frank, and then I was doubly surprised that Senator Kennedy was like, I had no idea this was going on. Where, first of all, look, we have a minute, so I’m going to ask a lot of questions, but it sounds like some, at least some of this is legal.

Some of it may be challenged in court, but where is Congress in all of this? Do they even have a role?

BIER: Congress theoretically sets the immigration laws for the United States and they’re failing to act, and they’re actually in some ways enabling this administration by refusing to conduct any oversight over the policies that have been adopted.

Congress theoretically sets the immigration laws for the United States and they’re failing to act.

David Bier

And at a minimum, we should be talking about hearings. We should be dragging these officials before Congress to answer for what they’re doing because right now, so much of it is unexplained and adopted on a really shady basis. I would describe many of these policies as being poorly explained and poorly legally justified.

CHAKRABARTI: And it’s resulting in millions and millions of people, sounds like.

BIER: Absolutely.

CHAKRABARTI: In this immigration black hole.

BIER: Including U.S. citizens.

The first draft of this transcript was created by Descript, an AI transcription tool. An On Point producer then thoroughly reviewed, corrected, and reformatted the transcript before publication. The use of this AI tool creates the capacity to provide these transcripts.