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The Trump administration fired four top officials at the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which oversees U.S. immigration courts, late Monday.
The officials were the chief immigration judge, Sheila McNulty; the acting director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, Mary Cheng; the office’s general counsel, Jill Anderson; and its head of policy, Lauren Alder Reid.
All were civil servants, not political appointees. Alder Reid said they were not given any warning.
“My career Senior Executive Service colleagues and I are shocked and severely disappointed in the decision to remove us from our positions without notice or cause,” she said. “We have dedicated our careers to upholding the rule of law, regardless of the administration. Our continued pursuit of justice will not be diminished.”
The four fired officials had decades of experience leading the nation’s overburdened immigration courts. The Justice Department employs more than 700 immigration judges, who decide whether migrants seeking asylum in the United States can remain in the country legally. The court system faces a record backlog of more than 3 million cases.
Spokespeople for the Trump administration and the Executive Office of Immigration Review did not immediately respond to request for comment on the firings.
The firings came shortly after President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders related to immigration Monday night. The Day 1 orders and firings follow Trump’s promises on the campaign trail to issue mass deportations and reshape the American immigration system immediately after taking office.
Julia Ainsley is the homeland security correspondent for NBC News and covers the Department of Homeland Security for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
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