President Donald Trump’s administration has added three new judges to Philadelphia’s immigration court, part of a sweeping and ongoing effort to transform the country’s immigration system and dramatically increase deportations nationwide.

The new members of Philadelphia’s immigration bench started hearing cases this month, the Justice Department said, and were part of a wave of appointments made to immigration courts across the country. More than 80 judges were sworn in last week to hear cases from New England to Southern California — part of what officials said was the largest new class of immigration judges ever assembled.

Philadelphia’s immigration bench now includes an assistant chief judge and 13 judges, eight of whom have been appointed by Trump over his two terms in office. During Trump’s second term, administration officials have spoken openly about a desire to use immigration courts to ramp up the speed at which immigrants can be ordered out of the country — just one example of how he is seeking to deliver on a promise of mass deportations.

“The Trump administration is committed to reestablishing an immigration judge corps that is dedicated to restoring the rule of law in our nation’s immigration system,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

Immigration court is a civil, not criminal, system in which judges are tasked with deciding whether undocumented immigrants should be allowed to remain in the country or get deported. And unlike the federal court system — which is an independent branch of government distinct from Congress or the White House — immigration court is part of the executive branch and overseen by the Justice Department.

During Trump’s second term, his administration has been aggressive in seeking to use that structural arrangement to remake the court to his liking — ousting dozens of judges and even closing a once-busy branch in San Francisco.

Immigration courthouses have also become places in which federal agents have sought to arrest and detain people appearing for routine hearings, creating what some advocates have compared to a deportation trap.

Earlier this month, Blanche said his department would continue to push out judges who, in the administration’s view, were not following the law or ruling on cases fast enough.

“If there’s judges that are just not applying the law in the way that it needs to be applied, delaying inappropriately, have backlogs that are just unacceptable, they’re the folks that we’re going to try to find somebody different to fill that spot,” he told the Associated Press.

Charles Honeyman, a longtime Philadelphia immigration judge who retired in 2020, said the pressure campaign was an “emasculation of any professionalism” for the court, and part of an effort to turn judges into “rubber stamps” who will interpret cases in ways the administration wants.

Hiring new judges “is all a ruse to make it seem like there’s really a court with integrity, and there isn’t anymore,” said Honeyman, who now works at the immigration law firm Palladino, Isbell & Casazza, LLC.

The three most recent appointees to Philadelphia’s immigration court are Johanna Gaymer, Keith E. Lipiec, and Devin A. Winklosky.

Gaymer previously worked as a lawyer with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the Justice Department, while Lipiec had a career as a military lawyer with stints supporting the Navy, Air Force, and Army.

Winklosky was most recently in private practice, the Justice Department said, and his previous jobs included serving as an administrative judge in the U.S. Department of Agriculture and as a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps.

Their additions expanded the region’s immigration court bench to a size that Honeyman said he had not seen during his time working as a judge.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review — the Justice Department division that oversees immigration courts — said its actions during Trump’s second term, including seeking to hire new judges, had reduced the nationwide backlog of immigration cases from 4 million to 3.5 million, which it said was the sharpest decrease in its history.

At the same time, asylum denial rates have increased. The Inquirer reported last fall that judges in Philadelphia’s immigration court in 2025 had issued denials in about 74% of asylum cases, up from 50% under former President Joe Biden. The national denial rate increased similarly after the transition from Biden to Trump, federal figures show.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association issued a policy briefing last year saying Trump’s actions regarding immigration courts had caused the system to begin “prioritizing speed and enforcement over fairness, accuracy, and fundamental justice.”

“The result,” the group wrote, “is a system where life-changing decisions are made by less qualified judges under impossible time pressure, with fewer safeguards against error and growing barriers to due process.”

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