Trump Reshapes Top Immigration Appeals Court to Curb Deportation Relief

NPR reports that the Trump administration has quietly overhauled the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), shrinking it by nearly half and filling the remaining 15 seats largely with Trump appointees while using it to lock in hard‑line precedent. In 2025 the board sided with Department of Homeland Security lawyers in 97% of publicly posted cases—at least 30 percentage points above its 16‑year average—while issuing a record 70 published decisions that are now binding on immigration courts nationwide. Those rulings have made it harder for immigrants to obtain bond instead of detention, easier for the government to deport people to countries other than their own, and, under a new proposed regulation, could soon make it more difficult to appeal deportation orders at all. Former BIA judges and immigration attorneys warn that gutting the board’s size and turning it into a near rubber stamp for DHS sharply increases the risk that legal errors in overburdened immigration courts will go uncorrected, in a system that already lacks the independence of Article III courts. The story underscores how structural moves deep inside DOJ are driving the Trump administration’s mass‑detention and deportation agenda even as public attention focuses on ICE raids and border operations.