Court Packing: Ousted Immigration Judge Sounds Off On Biden Administration

A former immigration judge who was fired by the Justice Department claimed that the Biden administration was packing immigration courts on Fox News Tuesday.

“The Biden Administration is trying to turn the court into essentially a free candy store so that anyone who appears in front of the immigration court winds up getting some benefits or winds up being allowed to stay in the United States,” Matthew O’Brien told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “That is not what the courts were designed to do.”

“They also seem to be in the strange position of dismissing immigration judges appointed by President Trump and then trying to replace them with people who meet their own ideological framework,” O’Brien claimed.

At least six judges were removed from positions at the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the Washington Times reported Monday. O’Brien, who was approaching the end of a two-year probationary period, was ousted this month after the Justice Department refused to appoint him to a permanent position.

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“The Biden Administration is in the process of ordering ICE to dismiss all the cases that are before it,” O’Brien told Ingraham. “They seem to be taking a creative approach to reducing the backlog by simply not pursuing the cases and releasing these people into the interior of the United States.”

Officials in border towns have expressed concerns about the overwhelming number of migrants entering the U.S. after U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) reported that agents encountered a record 239,416 migrants in May. In addition to the flood of migrants, CBP seized 22 pounds of fentanyl earlier this month.

For perspective, just two milligrams of fentanyl can be a potentially fatal dose, according to The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation.