Three judges native to North Carolina and graduates of universities in the state were appointed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the Charlotte Immigration Court, with the goal of helping to reduce the more than 125,000 pending immigration cases. pending cases.
However, none of them have a history of working in the immigration field.
According to the DOJ, this court currently has 9 judges: 7 permanent and 2 temporary, including the three newly appointed jurists.
Last week, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) announced the swearing-in of 77 new permanent and five temporary judges, the largest group in the agency's history, bringing the total number of immigration judges nationwide to nearly 700. EOIR is the agency that administers the Department of Justice's immigration courts.
“Reducing the backlog of cases in immigration courts remains a top priority for the agency. Since January 20, 2025, the EOIR has resolved more than 1.08 million cases and reduced its backlog in immigration courts by more than 447,000 cases, from approximately 4 million to less than 3.53 million—the largest decrease in the EOIR’s history,” the agency said in a statement.
Ninth court with the most cases on the waiting list
La Charlotte Immigration Court It handles cases from both North Carolina and South Carolina.
Data updated to March This year's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University indicates that there were 125,587 pending cases in the Charlotte Immigration Court, making it ninth in the country with the largest volume of cases on the waiting list.
The majority of immigrants are from Mexico (30,998), followed by Honduras (22,011) and Venezuela (18,451). According to the table, the average wait time for cases in 2026 reached 807 days, the longest since 2012.
In fiscal year 2024, this court reached the highest number of backlogged cases since 2012, with a total of 145,951.
Related: Do you risk being detained by ICE agents if you go to court?
They are all North Carolina judges
The agency shared the biographies of the two female judges and one male judge appointed to the Charlotte court, all of whom have served in North Carolina. However, none have a history of working in immigration law.
They also belong to the North Carolina Bar Association and completed their undergraduate and graduate studies in law at universities in the state.
This is the EOIR list of judges at the Charlotte court:
Immigration judges
- Christopher W. Bragg (new)
- Alicia D. Brooks
- Scott D. Criss
- Ellen Karesh
- Amy Lee
- Amy Sigmon Walker (new)
- Jennifer S. Wells (new)
Temporary judges
- Eric Levinson
- Michael Hayden
You can find the full biographies of the three judges in the list provided by EOIR.
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Dismissal of judges and closure of courts in other parts of the country
Meanwhile, in some cities across the country, immigration judges and courts have been fired and their offices closed by the current federal administration.
The most recent case is from the Immigration Court of San Francisco, California. which will close permanently on September 4th. Their cases will be reassigned to Concord or handled remotely. In San Francisco, this main court went from having 21 judges at the start of Trump's term to just two before the early closure.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has fired more than 100 immigration judges and filled the gaps in the system with judges with no experience in the matter.
experts like Austin Kocher, assistant research professor at the SI Newhouse School of Public Communication warns that this massive purge affects the American legal system and exacerbates the backlog of cases in the courts, which already exceeds 3 million accumulated cases.
According to Migrant ConnectionTo fill these vacancies, the administration has accelerated the hiring of more than 140 new judges, but under conditions that raise doubts about their technical capacity: The training program for new immigration judges was reduced from five to three weeks, while an analysis of The Washington Post It revealed that 67% of newly hired judges have no relevant prior experience in immigration and only 24% had previously worked in agencies such as ICE, DHS or in the immigration courts themselves.
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