{"id":971712,"date":"2026-07-31T17:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T17:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/971712\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T17:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T17:18:15","slug":"two-more-chicago-immigration-judges-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/971712\/","title":{"rendered":"Two more Chicago immigration judges fired"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump administration officials on Thursday fired two more judges at the Chicago Immigration Court, which has seen seismic changes since the president returned to office and recently become the national leader in deportation orders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now-terminated Immigration Judges Elizabeth Crites and Eva Saltzman had been with the city\u2019s immigration court since 2021 and 2016, respectively. The National Association of Immigration Judges confirmed their departures, which continue a wave of firings, resignations and buyouts<\/a> among Chicago immigration judges that began in January 2025.<\/p>\n

As the president, who has direct oversight of the country\u2019s immigration courts, seeks to reshape them in the image of his hardline agenda, the lineup of judges who hear cases of immigrants seeking to remain in the U.S. has changed dramatically, as have many of the basic elements that define the life of an immigration case. All of that, advocates and attorneys say, has helped transform the city\u2019s immigration court into the national epicenter of removal orders: from issuing 35 a day on average during President Joe Biden\u2019s last year to more than 125 a day this year.<\/p>\n

Crites, reached by phone, confirmed she\u2019d been fired but made no other comment. Saltzman, also reached by phone, said she found out she\u2019d been fired in the middle of a hearing, around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, through an email containing a three-sentence PDF.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was stunned and disappointed but not surprised,\u201d Saltzman said. \u201cI\u2019ve served as an immigration judge for the last decade and under this administration, I continued to do my job the way I\u2019ve always done it, giving careful consideration to each case and applying the law to each case. And I\u2019ve long anticipated that under this administration, performing my duties in this way may result in my termination.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, she continued, there had been no immediate warning signs that she was about to be terminated. A representative with the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the country\u2019s immigration courts as part of the U.S. Department of Justice, said the office didn\u2019t comment on personnel matters.<\/p>\n

The Tribune reported earlier this month how Chicago\u2019s immigration court had become the national epicenter of removal orders across the country, using Department of Justice data \u2014 obtained and refined by the research group Deportation Data Project \u2014 to find that even Biden-era judges saw notable swings toward issuing higher rates of removal orders once Trump took office.<\/p>\n

That was true of judges\u00a0Crites and Saltzman as well, but the Tribune analysis found that they still lagged their peers\u2019 prolific pace of removal orders.<\/p>\n

When looking at all judges who concluded at least 50 cases that month \u2014 and excluding cases that ended with the immigrant voluntarily deciding to leave \u2014 the analysis found the two judges had the two lowest percentages of cases concluding in the issuance of removal orders. Crites handled the court\u2019s juvenile cases, while Saltzman was one of two judges to hear cases from the detained docket, for people who are fighting their cases while in DHS custody..<\/p>\n

For Judge Crites, the analysis found that she concluded roughly a fifth of her more than 500 June cases by dismissing, terminating or otherwise closing them without issuing a removal order \u2014 the kind of nuanced ending that can frustrate those pushing for mass deportation.<\/p>\n

Judge Saltzman issued the fewest removal orders of the group, just 33 in an immigration courthouse where judges typically issued hundreds that month, and one judge issued more than 900. Saltzman said Thursday that that wasn\u2019t surprising to her at all, given the caseload she worked with.<\/p>\n

Immigrants who choose to fight to stay in the U.S. from detention tend to do so because their cases stand a good chance of getting a favorable outcome, she said: \u201cThe relief applications that I am considering are self-selected in a a way that makes them more likely to be cases that should be granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other consequence of Saltzman\u2019s hearing the detained docket was the fact that her caseload drew a substantial amount of media attention, most recently in the case of Reuben Torres Maldonado. Torres Maldonado\u2019s 16-year-old daughter Ofelia Torres<\/a> was in the throes of treatment for Stage IV cancer when federal agents arrested him at the height of Operation Midway Blitz. Ofelia Torres died in February<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saltzman, as she made the decision to release him on bond Oct. 30 of last year, noted he is an unlikely flight risk and has a case to potentially remain in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish you much luck in the future and I wish your daughter a full recovery,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While her docket tended to attract higher-profile cases like that of the Torres family, Saltzman said she\u2019d \u201cnever made a decision with any particular agenda or end goal in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chicago Tribune\u2019s Joe Mahr contributed.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump administration officials on Thursday fired two more judges at the Chicago Immigration Court, which has seen seismic…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":971713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,166564,12764,5386,1818,409,6635],"class_list":["post-971712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-immigration-court","tag-deportations","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-immigration","tag-immigration-court"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117015734696063951","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/971713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}