US Army Reserve Lawyer Fired After Granting Asylum in Immigration Cases
Christopher Day, a US Army Reserve lawyer and temporary immigration judge in Annandale, Virginia, was fired around December 2, after about five weeks on the job since late October. During November, data show that Day granted asylum or relief in 6 of 11 cases, a rate that conflicted with the Trump administration's goals of mass deportation.
The firing was confirmed by the National Association of Immigration Judges, but officials from the Justice Department declined to comment and provided no formal reason for the dismissal. The Trump administration has been pushing to overhaul the nation's 75 immigration courts to reduce an asylum backlog of roughly 3.8 million cases. This overhaul includes firing judges seen as too liberal and expanding the pool of "Deportation Judges" by approving the deployment of up to 600 military lawyers to hear asylum cases.
Data from November indicate that migrants heard by military judges were ordered removal or departure in 78% of cases, compared with 63% for other judges, with about 90% of such cases still resulting in removal or departure. Immigration judges are Department of Justice employees who can be fired by the attorney general, unlike lifetime-tenured federal judges. Day's rapid firing raises questions about the protections and standards for military lawyers placed in immigration judge roles.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice allegedly prohibits interference or retaliation against military attorneys in military tribunals; however, the relevance of those protections to non-traditional assignments such as immigration courts remains untested. Christopher Day is a graduate of American University and has held multiple federal roles while serving as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve's Judge Advocate General's Corps.
