Each month, judges at the Fort Snelling Immigration Court in Minnesota decide hundreds of cases involving immigrants fighting deportation by claiming they face persecution and dangers in their home countries. For years, the odds of winning were slim. Now, they have become vanishingly small.

In the first two months of this year, judges at the state’s immigration court granted asylum in just two out of 982 cases, according to a Minnesota Star Tribune analysis of data from Mobile Pathways, a nonprofit that analyzes court decisions.

The collapse in approvals reflects a sweeping shift under the Trump administration, which has pushed immigration judges to move cases faster, narrowed longstanding interpretations of asylum law and fired more than 100 judges nationwide, including two in Minnesota.

The result, immigration attorneys, former judges and advocates say, is a court system increasingly focused on deportation over deliberation. Judges who served under Republican and Democratic administrations say judicial discretion has eroded and immigrants with potentially viable claims are losing their cases before they can fully make them.

The Fort Snelling bench is now rejecting twice as many asylum claims as it did under the last year of the Biden administration, according to the analysis. Immigrants abandoned their cases nearly three times more often in 2025 than in 2024.

“The administration is waging an across-the-board battle to get as many people out of the country as they can,” said Joe Dierkes, a longtime Fort Snelling immigration judge who retired three years ago after serving under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. “Judges are in a difficult spot here, in that they’re at the mercy of the political elements of the government.”

Unlike other federal judges, immigration judges work for the U.S. Department of Justice and are not appointed for life. Judges who don’t follow the administration’s policies risk losing their jobs.

An immigration court spokeswoman declined to answer specific questions from the Star Tribune and said judges are thoroughly trained and expected to be impartial.

Ryan Wood, who supervised the Fort Snelling Immigration Court and retired a month into Trump’s second term, said there is unprecedented pressure on immigration judges to quickly issue deportation orders, even though federal law still allows people fleeing violence abroad to live in the country while their cases are pending.

“If you don’t like the system, you can change the law,” Wood said. “We are not changing the laws. We are just ignoring them right now.”

Migrant crossings at the southern border soared in 2021 and 2022 after Biden dropped most of the immigration restrictions imposed during Trump’s first term. Trump won a second term, in part, by promising a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration system and its backlog of 3.3 million cases.

The bulk of those are asylum claims, commonly filed by people who say they fled to the U.S. to evade persecution, including torture, sexual violence and death. By law, asylum cases are supposed to be decided in 180 days, but the backlog means an applicant can wait up to 10 years for a decision.

As a result, millions of immigrants have been living in the United States without obtaining permanent status. The Trump administration argues most asylum-seekers don’t have credible claims and are taking advantage of the backlog to work for as long as they can, taking jobs away from citizens.

In response to the Star Tribune’s questions about recent efforts to detain Minnesotans with pending asylum applications and hold them without bond, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security blamed “Biden’s catch and release policies” that “dangerously unleashed millions of unvetted illegal aliens into American communities.”

Andrew Arthur, law and policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stronger immigration enforcement, believes many asylum cases are frivolous because the applicants were drawn more by America’s economic opportunities than pushed by danger at home.

Arthur, a former immigration judge, credited the Trump administration for reducing the decadeslong case backlog.

“Changes were overdue in this system. At the appropriate level, the system works fine,” he said. “When it gets overloaded, like it has in the last four years, the system breaks down.”

Other immigration experts blame decades of understaffing for the courts’ inability to rule on cases in a timely manner. They say restricting those seeking refuge in the U.S. is not the right way to deal with the backlog.

Trump’s massive 2025 spending bill pumped $170 billion into immigration enforcement, detention and deportation over four years. About $1.3 billion was earmarked to expand court capacity.

On an April weekday morning, Fort Snelling immigration Judge M. Audrey Carr reviewed her docket while her newest colleague, Nathan Hansen, hovered over her shoulder like a home-plate umpire. Referring to her computer screen, Carr was teaching Hansen how judges track their cases.

The two judges came to the job from distinctly different backgrounds, even though they were both appointed under Trump.

Carr joined the bench in 2018 with decades of immigration law experience, including working as a staff lawyer with the Advocates for Human Rights. In the years before Trump returned to office, Carr was one of the Fort Snelling court’s more sympathetic judges.

But like her colleagues, Carr’s deportation orders rose dramatically in 2025, when she ordered 1,493 immigrants removed from the U.S., 655 more than the year before.

While Carr has a background in immigration law, Hansen’s political views are more in line with the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

Hansen has little experience in immigration law, according to a Star Tribune review of his record. Until recently, he worked as an attorney on divorces, DWIs and civil disputes.

He does have one key qualification. He’s a rock-ribbed Trump backer who has delighted in trolling Democrats, journalists and the public. Before Hansen ran for state District Court judge in 2024, he deleted much of his prolific social media history touting right-wing conspiracy theories.

But some of his past statements on immigration remain. For example, as Operation Metro Surge was ramping up in December, Hansen pondered how he could help immigration agents on a city of Stillwater social media post that discussed how the enforcement created fear and uncertainty.

Hansen was the first judge hired at Fort Snelling since Amy Zaske was fired in September along with dozens of other immigration judges nationwide. A former Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney, Zaske had one of the highest denial rates on the Fort Snelling bench.

“I don’t see a lot of logic in firing Amy Zaske, other than to create fear for everyone on the bench,” said Wood, who advised the Star Tribune on immigration court transparency.

Zaske could not be reached for comment.

Benjamin Davey, who took over as assistant chief immigration judge for Fort Snelling when Wood retired, was also fired. The reason for his dismissal is unclear, but he was working to address concerns over court transparency before his dismissal.

“We’re witnessing the dismantling of an immigration court system replaced with no ability to make any decision,” said Jeremiah Johnson, a recently fired San Francisco immigration judge who still serves as the union’s vice president.

Before Trump’s second term, judges granted asylum at vastly different rates.

Minnesota immigration attorneys could predict the outcome of a case based largely on which judge was assigned, said Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor Ana Pottratz Acosta.

Now, predicting outcomes is even easier because most cases are denied.

“It’s almost gotten to the point where you have to prepare every case with the understanding that you will need to appeal,” Pottratz Acosta said.

But lawyers say those appeals also face difficult odds.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, which tells judges how to interpret the law, published 70 decisions last year — more than the entirety of the Biden administration — with only two favorable to immigrants.

The rulings allow for indefinite detention for anyone entering the U.S. without a valid visa and allow judges to send asylum-seekers to countries where they have no ties.

In public, the Justice Department has said it’s recruiting “deportation judges.” In private, the administration is pressuring judges to explain decisions that favored immigrants, according to the national immigration judges union. The approach has frustrated immigration advocates.

“If we’re a nation of laws, you don’t take away people’s fair shot,” said Amy Lange of the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, a Minneapolis nonprofit that represents low-income asylum-seekers. “If you think the backlog is too big, you clear the backlog. You don’t do it by changing the rules.”

The Justice Department declined to comment on “personnel matters and litigation-related matters,” including whether there was managerial pressure on judges to side against immigrants.

The shift in approach is evident in court.

Recently a 24-year-old Shakopee resident, Andres, was denied a chance to prove his asylum case after he fled Colombia in 2024. He said he left after a drug cartel picked a fight with his family over their land and murdered his uncle and grandfather. The Star Tribune is using only his first name because he fears reprisal.

At an April court appearance by remote video, Andres implored Judge Brian Sardelli to allow him to stay in the U.S. He said he received death threats if he didn’t join the cartel. “I don’t want to. It’s either that or my life.”

In the past, such threats of violence would place an asylum-seeker in a persecuted group. But they no longer qualify under new asylum rules. Sardelli, a former federal narcotics prosecutor, said the Colombian man wasn’t entitled to a full hearing.

“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt about everything you told me,” Sardelli said. “You still don’t have a viable case.”

He ordered Andres removed from the country.

The Fort Snelling Immigration Court sits at the end of a nondescript hallway on the first floor of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. There’s a lobby filled with chairs and five windowless courtrooms where immigration hearings are held.

Court records are not public, so the only way for the public to know what is going on is to examine paper dockets pinned to the bulletin board. Immigrants must find their own attorneys.

Federal law says immigration court is open to the public in all but “limited exceptions.” But over the past 14 months, Fort Snelling judges and staff locked courtroom doors and routinely barred observers — including journalists from the Star Tribune.

Over the last year, the court has expedited cases through a so-called “rocket docket” that moved hundreds of Somalis to the front of the queue. Some hearings have also been moved online, so judges are assigned cases across the country. In many instances, only immigrants and their attorneys have access to the virtual hearings.

Despite the online scheduling, judges remain skeptical when immigrants ask to appear remotely and often don’t allow it. During a recent online hearing, Sardelli asked a man who relocated to Stone Mountain to walk outside and show him a Georgia license plate.

“We have a lot of problems with people who say they’ve moved,” he said, denying the man’s request to change the venue to Atlanta.

The Advocates for Human Rights, which has been tracking cases at Fort Snelling for nearly a decade, sued in March to compel greater transparency. The Star Tribune is one of several news organizations that filed a legal brief supporting more transparency.

Courthouse detainments, skyrocketing court fees and quick deportation decisions also mean fewer immigrants are coming to their hearings. Recently, fewer than a third of the immigrants scheduled for in-person hearings show up.

Immigrants who skip hearings are almost always ordered removed from the country.

Despite the increased denials, there are rare instances when an immigrant wins their case.

In March, attorney Chue Vue didn’t know what to expect when he made his first appearance in Monte Miller’s court. Miller has long been one of Fort Snelling’s toughest judges, granting immigrants’ requests less than 1% of the time since Trump returned to office.

Vue had a client who came to the U.S. from Myanmar on a work visa in 2017. His asylum case went nowhere, but he married a citizen in 2023 and was eligible to apply for permanent residency.

Miller made one of the man’s family members promise under oath they would repay any government assistance he received. When he was satisfied, Miller told the government attorney he was likely to approve the request.

“I’ve reviewed the application, and I don’t see any negative factors,” Miller said, granting approval.

Vue left the courtroom shocked at how “quickly and smoothly” his first hearing went. Half-jokingly, he asked a reporter if hearings often go that well.

“I bet they don’t,” Vue said.

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