One Block from the Abyss - How Trump Is Rebuilding America’s Immigration Justice. An Investigative Report from Hell

One block away they stand, crowded together, freezing, papers in hand. Men, women, children - migrants who have come for routine hearings, as the law requires. But the law has long since become a trap. Whoever shows up here risks being ambushed by ICE agents, arrested, separated - in the middle of Manhattan, under the cold neon light of a state that has lost its humanity.

Pictures say more than words. Faces one cannot forget. Tears that sink into the asphalt before anyone even notices them. Every single fate is a drama. People who have done nothing wrong - except hope. People living in a country led by a fascist president who despises compassion, preaches hate, and shows every day that he sees strength only in humiliation and violence.

The trap of New York City at 26 Federal Plaza on the corner of Broadway and Franklin, plastered - just one block away from the place where migrants line up to attend routine hearings and risk being attacked by ICE agents and separated from their families.

As protesters repeatedly marched around 26 Federal Plaza, immigrant rights advocates created a makeshift memorial along a fence outside the building for those detained and deported.

And yet, in the midst of this brutality, there is light. Everywhere despair reigns, there are people who refuse to look away. People, organizations, and lawyers - they all give their best, every day. So many wonderful people, organizations, and lawyers do everything they can to help others. We all give our best to help many people. We do what we can - with the means we have left. It is a fight against the evil windmill, yes, but we must fight it. Every one of us. Because this fight is something we owe to our own reflection.

It was our greatest battle - “The Fight Was Worth It - Andry Hernández Romero, CECOT, and the Double Exile of a Survivor” at the link: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/der-kampf-hat-sich-gelohnt-andry-hernandez-romero-das-cecot-und-das-doppelte-exil-eines-ueberlebenden/

But while the fight continues outside, inside the courts themselves are turning into tools of power. It began with a moment of silence in a courtroom in Concord, California. Judge Kyra Lilien paused the hearing of an asylum seeker, opened an email, and said only: “We won’t be having a hearing today - I’ve just been fired.” The Department of Homeland Security attorney thought it was a joke. But Lilien stood up, packed her things, and left. Almost simultaneously, other judges received the same message. In Virginia, Anam Petit read her dismissal between two hearings. In Cleveland, Tania Nemer was taken directly from the courtroom after she had just explained the rights of migrants to a group. No one knew why. No one received an explanation.

For months, the Trump administration has been clearing out the immigration courts - judges with experience defending migrants are disappearing one after another. Officially, the Justice Department calls it routine review. In reality, it targets those who think too independently. NPR documented at least 70 such dismissals between February and October. Nearly half of those affected had previously worked exclusively in migrant defense. Those are precisely the backgrounds that now seem suspicious.

“None of us have received an explanation,” says Lilien. “But the patterns are too clear to be coincidence.” Tania Nemer, formerly an attorney for asylum seekers, also doesn’t believe it’s bureaucracy. “I fit the profile,” she says. “Woman, immigrant background, left-wing past - and too human.”

The Justice Department denies the accusation. In a statement, it said that judges are evaluated on performance, professionalism, and adherence to the law. But in practice, it keeps hitting those who are at the end of their two-year probationary period - the moment when they should actually become permanent and protected from dismissal. The consequences are devastating. Every judge handles hundreds, often thousands of cases. When they suddenly leave, everything grinds to a halt. Cases that were close to a decision are rescheduled - sometimes for 2029. People who have already waited six years now face new dates, new judges, new uncertainty.

Shira Levine, a judge in New York until September, remembers the moment she was dismissed. “I was in the middle of a hearing when the email came. No one was shocked; everyone knew it was only a matter of time.” She had denied a government motion to dismiss a case. A few hours later, she was out of a job. Since summer, ICE agents have been patrolling the courthouse hallways while hearings are in progress. Those whose rulings do not align with the political agenda are watched - and often replaced. The hardest impact falls on those whose lives depend on these decisions: families who have waited years for their hearings and now have to start over from scratch. Their cases are handed to new judges who are already overwhelmed.

Our article: “The New Deportation Machine in New York - Trump’s Second Offensive and the Return of Fear” at the link: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/die-neue-abschiebungsmaschinerie-in-new-york-trumps-zweite-offensive-und-die-rueckkehr-der-angst/

More than 125 judges have left in the past ten months - through dismissal or resignation. At the same time, new ones are being appointed, mostly with backgrounds in the military, the Department of Homeland Security, or ICE. Independent voices are disappearing. The new head of the immigration courts, Daren Margolin, was once a Marine officer and government lawyer - dismissed for a firearms incident, later brought back. His first act in office: appointing 25 new judges, nearly all with military backgrounds. Not a single one has ever defended migrants.

Dana Leigh Marks, who served for decades as an immigration judge, calls it a regression by decades. “The head of the prosecutor must not also be the head of the judge,” she says. “But that’s exactly where we’ve ended up again.” What is happening here is not administrative reform but the quiet restructuring of the judiciary. Loyalty replaces experience. Speed replaces justice. And while new, compliant judges are sworn in, outside in the overcrowded waiting rooms sit people who have spent years wanting nothing more than to be heard. Some never will.

One block away from the halls of power, America is still fighting for its soul. And as long as somewhere, someone reaches out a hand to another, that fight is not lost.