Case backlogs. Concerns about judicial independence. Uncertainty and fear among clients.
These are only some of the challenges facing New York City’s hundreds of immigration attorneys following a tumultuous first year of the Trump administration that saw mass cancellations of temporary protected status, oustings of immigration judges, denial of bond hearings and the broad suspension of asylum decisions.
As a result of upended legal norms and a gutted immigration court system, lawyers have been left struggling to advise the tens of thousands of New Yorkers stuck in limbo or facing removal from the U.S.
“It is the worst time I have ever seen in the immigration practice for attorneys and immigrants and for the court itself,” said Maria Navarro, a former immigration judge in New York City who retired in May 2025 after serving six years on the bench.
Navarro, who has been working in immigration for two decades and is currently a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Unit, believes that these are unprecedented times, both in terms of the firing of qualified immigration judges and the use of executive orders to bypass Congress and enact policy changes.
“I had no idea how bad it would get,” she said to Documented.
The Trump administration’s legal maneuvers — including the firing of at least seven immigration judges from 26 Federal Plaza in December — have exacerbated New York’s already-overburdened immigration system, legal experts said. The state has one of the highest immigration court backlogs in the country, alongside Texas, California and Florida, with nearly 325,000 pending cases, according to data from TRAC reports.
Malak Shalabi, a New York-based attorney at Kenepaske and Scott, PLLC, who represents clients in removal proceedings and before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says her clients are directly experiencing delays to their cases, especially following judicial purges in the city’s immigration courts. New York City has lost more than a quarter of its immigration judges since Trump took office for a second term.
“[Clients are] shocked and they’re scared,” Shalabi said to Documented. “We don’t know to whom the case will be reassigned, who will be the new immigration judge assigned to the case, and when the new hearing date will be, so it’s caused confusion, especially for clients, many of which have been waiting for years for their upcoming hearing date.”
A spokesperson from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), an agency under the DOJ tasked with adjudicating immigration cases through the nation’s court system, told Documented in an email: “All cases are reassigned to a different judge. No cases are on hold.” They did not provide clarity on how timelines for adjudication have changed.
Amid shifting judges and timelines, Shalabi said one major challenge immigration attorneys face is helping detained clients who are losing hope.
“Over time, under the severe conditions, the deprivation of access to people, their family and the outside world, they experience what’s referred to as ‘detention fatigue,’” she said. “So it becomes increasingly harder to be able to work with people because of the expanding sense of helplessness that they feel in detention.”
Maria Mateo, another New York-based immigration attorney and vice president of the Latino Lawyers Association of Queens County, has serious concerns about judicial independence after the December round of firings and recent policy changes.
“It’s a very tense environment right now in immigration court, because the judges are afraid that they’re going to be next,” she said. “And of course, for the clients, is a very scary time, because although the judges are supposed to follow the law, they are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice, and because of that, they have to follow whatever directives the Department of Justice will implement.”
Those directives are also increasingly pushing immigrant New Yorkers to choose between detention, which could go on indefinitely, or voluntary departure, the lawyers said.
“A lot more prospective clients ask about voluntary departure, how to self deport, and for people who fear returning to their home country, they express just exasperation that they have no idea what to do, where to go,” Shalabi said.
Another challenge faced by lawyers is that judges are increasingly dismissing cases, thanks to recent precedents, as early as pre-trial hearings. Some cases, the lawyers said, are getting tossed out because the judge determines there is insufficient evidence to support a claim, and others because of a typo or missed checkbox on a piece of paperwork. The uptick in dismissals — formally called pretermissions — has enabled the immigration system to expand and expedite deportations.
Mateo, who represents asylum-seekers, expressed concerns about the rise in case dismissals. “It is well known that we have asylum agreements that we should follow and that the clients should have at least the possibility of being heard, to present their cases in front of judges, and have the judges decide if their cases are valid,” Mateo said.
But Mateo said that under Trump’s second term, fewer asylum seekers have the opportunity to share their story in court and explain why they fear returning to their home country.
The impact on her clients, Mateo said, is devastating: “Primarily the goal is to intimidate the clients, and it’s actually having an effect.”
When it comes to how immigration attorneys can fight for their clients amid Trump’s policy chaos, Navarro says recording everything and bringing appeals to federal court remain viable forms of legal recourse.
“We’ve been finding ourselves as immigration attorneys having to go into federal court in a way that really wasn’t happening in the past,” Navarro said, adding that fighting for the release of detained immigrants — on grounds of unlawful detention, lack of due process, or violation of constitutional protections — has proven successful at the federal level. “A lot of what we’re doing is making sure we have, at least, a good record for when we have to go into federal court.”
According to data in Habeas Dockets, there are nearly 500 such habeas corpus appeals for detained immigrants active across New York’s district courts.
The number of appeals is likely to increase, not only because of rising arrests, but also because of a recent court decision that ruled petitioners may be entitled to having their attorney’s fees and costs covered under the Equal Access to Justice Act.
In a recent case, one individual “Y-C-,” detained at 26 Federal Plaza and transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center, was granted release in December following the filing of a habeas petition in the New York Eastern District Court. The judge ordered his immediate release, citing violation of due process and the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
你知道吗？非公民办理驾照时的这个错误可能会导致选民欺诈
For lawyers like Navarro, judicial rejection of Trump’s attempts to rewrite immigration law have been a bright spot amid an otherwise harrowing legal landscape. Navarro also emphasized that continuing to challenge the Trump administration is important, though immigration attorneys and clients may be feeling hopeless.
“We can’t promise [clients] what’s going to happen or when, and so a lot of it is also guiding attorneys to know that it does feel at times that there’s nothing we can do — but it’s not true,” she said. “Without attorneys fighting this, it would just continue to happen. And many of these cases where we are pushing back on [we] are eventually winning.”
Correction February 11, 2026: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the number of pending cases in New York’s immigration courts. It has been updated to reflect the most recent number.
