They’re not judges. The judicial branch of government exists under Article III of the Constitution. Its judges are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, after which they have tenure for life upon good behavior. These judges get to appoint inferior judges, magistrates, to assist them. Mags are judges because they serve under the judicial branch.

But immigration judges are not judges, do not serve under Article III or the judicial branch, and yet are charged with the fair and impartial administration of immigration laws. But despite the name and cool black robes, they are not to be confused with judges.

(4) The term “immigration judge” means an attorney whom the Attorney General appoints as an administrative judge within the Executive Office for Immigration Review, qualified to conduct specified classes of proceedings, including a hearing under section 1229a of this title. An immigration judge shall be subject to such supervision and shall perform such duties as the Attorney General shall prescribe, but shall not be employed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Nonetheless, the Code of Federal Regulations provides that immigration judges should exercise “independent judgment and discretion.” Notably, it does not state that immigration judges’ exercise of judgment should be fair and impartial, although that was always understood as the nature of their quasi-judicial role, which was to provide the due process which the Constitution guaranteed. No more.

Then the door behind her swung open, thudding against the wall. In walked her supervisor.

“Are you on the record?” he asked, questioning whether she was in session.

Karen Donoso Stevens was in session, and she was certain he knew it. The judge held up a finger — wait — as she announced a recess inside the Annandale Immigration Court.

A Homeland Security attorney at the prosecution table watched in silence, as did her legal assistant.

She drew a long breath, then stood in the black robe she’d worn for nearly a decade, its cloth fraying at the elbow.

Here we go, the judge thought, certain she was about to be fired.

In the hallway, she recalled, her supervisor said he’d been instructed to pull her from court.

“Why?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

Former Homeland Security prosecutor turned immigration judge Donoso Stevens was pulled from her calendar and ultimately fired, one of about 100 out of 700 immigration judges canned and replaced by “deportation judges.”

Every year, Donoso Stevens had denied asylum in more than half the applications that came before her, a record consistently in line with national averages. She hadn’t resisted case quotas imposed by the first Trump administration and seldom took sick leave. She never fell behind on her docket.

But on that morning in Northern Virginia, she feared none of it mattered. By then, Donoso Stevens said, another supervisor had already ordered her to reverse four rulings at the direction of unidentified “higher-ups,” a violation of judicial authority she once considered inconceivable. The interference, she said, had only escalated since.

So much for independent judgment, whether that judgment be fair and impartial or completely biased. She worked for Blanche. Blanche worked for Trump. Trump had an agenda to deport and her job was to wear a robe, pretend to provide due process and then deport. Deport, deport, deport.

Much of the functioning of the government’s bureaucracy involves delivering the due process required by the Fifth and Fourteenth (for states) Amendments. Whether it’s the NLRB, EEOC, FCC, or any other combination of letters, the charge of administering law by holding hearings and rendering decisions after providing due process, the opportunity to be informed of the charges against you and the opportunity to respond, presumes that it will be a fair hearing. After all, hearings are not supposed to be for show, to create the appearance of due process without the reality of a fair decision based upon the evidence and argument presented.

Similarly, much of the jurisprudence surrounding immigration relies on the presumption that immigrants are being given due process, and that immigration judges are being fair and impartial in considering the claims against removal and for asylum. Whether that was ever truly the case is a debatable proposition. Immigration judges were never known for being particularly sympathetic toward the plight of immigrants, even the toddlers expected to defend themselves without counsel or the capacity to comprehend the proceedings.

It was understood when Trump started firing immigration judges whose deportation rulings merely extended to most cases, as opposed to all cases, that the administration expected its robed DoJ employees to move immigrants through the system and out of the country like cattle. After all, how else can you deport millions of people in so little time?

Thus, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that judges’ rulings other than removal were frowned upon, and they should put in some effort polishing up their resumes as they weren’t long for the job. But to have “higher-ups” tell them to reverse their “independent” decisions turned the immigration show into a circus.

If the outcome is pre-ordained and the process is just to enable the Supreme Court to take comfort in pretending that they went through the due process motions, that’s bad enough. When an immigration judge is ordered to change the occasional “misguided” ruling in favor of an immigrant by the administration, then it has reached the point of no return. It was mostly a sham before. Now it’s just a sham and nothing more.