A former San Francisco immigration judge fired by the Trump administration last year filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit Thursday accusing the Department of Justice of terminating her for raising due process concerns over new policy directives and ICE enforcement tactics.
Judge Chloe Dillon is among 14 San Francisco judges fired since President Trump’s return to office and is the first of the group to sue over her removal.
Her lawsuit opens with a quote from George Orwell: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Dillon, like dozens of other immigration judges fired since last year, was originally appointed by the Biden administration. She first took the bench in 2022 after serving for nearly a decade as a federal public defender in San Diego.
“I was really excited,” Dillon told NBC Bay Area. “I felt like it was an excellent fit for me. I felt it was something that I cared about – ensuring justice in immigration court.”
Over the next three years working as a judge at one of the country’s busiest immigration courts, Dillon said she resolved thousands of cases, earning excellent performance reviews along the way. According to Dillon’s lawsuit, her “decisions were almost never appealed.”
“It was really interesting work,” Dillon said. “I felt like it was really important that people were heard and that their cases were decided carefully and based on all the evidence.”
But Dillon said the job began to change almost...
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