The Executive Office for Immigration Review fired Fort Snelling immigration judge Amy Zaske last month, immigration court sources confirmed to the Minnesota Daily. 

In April, the court held the deportation trial of University of Minnesota international graduate student Doğukan Gunaydin, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for over a month. 

Zaske’s firing comes during a time of nationwide dismissals of immigration judges by EOIR, which cites the executive branch’s authority under Article 2 of the Constitution. A spokesperson for EOIR declined to comment, saying the office does not comment on personnel matters. 

Fort Snelling Immigration Court oversees immigration cases for Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota residents. The court had over 21,000 new cases filed in 2024 and is currently experiencing a backlog of 38,694 cases, with the number likely to increase before the end of the year. 

Former Assistant Chief Immigration Judge at Fort Snelling Ryan Wood said losing another immigration judge will push the limits of an already strained system.

“The court system on January 19th, 2025, was operating at 125%, or more,” Wood said. “The staff, we were running a sprint pace at marathon lengths indefinitely.” 

Wood also said the shortage of administrative staff is equally problematic for the case backlog.

“When you think of the amount of staff work it takes to manage a case docket of 40,000 cases, it’s a lot of people,” Wood said. “They are woefully understaffed, and I don’t know how they’re going to keep up with this.”

Along with staffing changes, the way immigration law has been enforced has changed substantially since President Donald Trump took office in January. The number of individuals criminally prosecuted for immigration violations reached around 6,885 in May, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, up from about 3,344 in February, Trump’s first full month in office. 

At Fort Snelling, mounting pressure from the federal government to increase immigration enforcement has led to changes in judges’ decision-making. According to Amy Lange, project manager for The Advocates for Human Rights’ court observation project, the Department of Homeland Security has increased the number of motions to dismiss immigration cases, subjecting immigrants to potential detention and deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Lange says judges have repeatedly shifted stances on how to deal with motions for dismissal. 

“There were two judges when this first started that weren’t automatically dismissing cases, then obviously there was a lot of pressure that came from above because then they were dismissing every case,” Lange said. “In the last week, we’ve seen two different judges deny a dismissal, and that’s new since early August.”

According to Lange, the administrative staff at the court has rapidly departed. She said that in some cases, staff were provided financial incentives to depart, and in other instances, staff members were fired. 

Lange also echoed Wood’s concerns about court system funding and confirmed that former Immigration Judge Zaske’s cases had been reassigned.

“They’re reassigning her cases to other people,” Lange said. “People were showing up for afternoon appearances with Judge Carr, and those hearings had been rescheduled for June, but nobody knew.”

Wood said that Homeland Security Investigations’ and enforcement priorities have shifted under the Trump administration to emphasize immigration. 

“They [prosecutors] have metrics; we want to see x number of worksite enforcement actions, x number of prosecutions for child exploitation,” Wood said. “Those metrics have turned to immigration enforcement.”

Fort Snelling currently has six immigration judges. To Wood, the onslaught of firings and pressure on immigration judges has a more discrete motivation of making a mental impact. 

“We can’t see a lot of logic in the noise right now, other than that it’s putting fear in the judges,” Wood said. “You’re making close decisions on the bench, and that weighs. On the human level, it’s really tough.”