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This week, immigration attorneys had their worst fears confirmed: The U.S. government appears to be specifically targeting Somali nationals seeking asylum in a disturbing new process that no other asylum-seekers are facing. Data from the Department of Justice reveals that over half of Somali nationals who had an open asylum case were suddenly reassigned, given a new judge and a new hearing date mere weeks away. This is not normal; immigration court is deeply backlogged and most cases of asylum—one of the most complex forms of U.S. immigration—were being assigned well into 2029 and 2030. Lawyers argue this fast-track policy is unlawful and will deny thousands of Somali immigrants a fair hearing. The news broke just as President Donald Trump went on another xenophobic tirade against Somali refugees, calling Somalia a “disgusting country, one of the worst countries in the world,” and calling refugees from Somalia “stupid people.”
Trump’s horrifying abuse is apparently trickling down into the immigration courts themselves. According to bklg.org, an immigration tool that analyzes publicly available court data, there are an estimated 3,366 open Somali asylum cases nationwide and 2,230 have recently been reassigned, impacting asylum-seekers in 34 different states. In most reassigned cases, 88 percent, Somali immigrants were transferred to an out-of-state judge in Texas, Georgia, California, or Louisiana. Most of these judges are considered senior-level, as they sit under the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, which oversees the more than 600 immigration judges all across the country.
This is significant because asylum cases are deeply complex, requiring a mountain of factual evidence to prove an immigrant faces legitimate threats of persecution in their home country. Immigration attorneys must produce all sorts of documentation, witness testimony, and evidence, often also requiring translations, that then require a lengthy hearing in front of a judge. In fiscal year 2024, the American Immigration Council estimated that asylum-seekers waited on average three and half years before being granted asylum. Those cases exclusively for Somalis are now on what would be considered a rocket docket.
Matthew Hoppock is an immigration attorney in Kansas, and he told me that he’s currently handling 10 Somali nationals’ asylum cases. In February, he first noticed that almost all of them were reassigned to a new judge in Louisiana, with court dates set for May, and each one had identical filing deadlines. “I have never seen anything like it,” Hoppock wrote on social media at the time, noting that several other attorneys shared with him that their Somali clients were also transferred to the same judge and had new court dates scheduled for March. “I don’t know for sure why. But it’s chilling.”
Over a month later, data appears to confirm Hoppock’s fears that his Somali clients are indeed being targeted by the Trump administration. Bklg.org found that over 60 percent of open asylum cases reassigned on short notice in early 2026 were Somali immigrants. Hoppock told me this does not feel like a coincidence, as President Donald Trump just three months ago called Somali immigrants “garbage” who “come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.” In Thursday’s latest rant he slandered Somali refugees as having “low IQs” and said “they rob us blind.”
About a month after Trump’s earlier remarks, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Temporary Protected Status would no longer be offered to Somali nationals. TPS is a George H.W. Bush–era program where foreign-born individuals who faced safety risks if they returned to their home country could enter the U.S. and legally work.* Hundreds of Somali immigrants would have had just two months to leave the U.S. or face deportation, but earlier this month a judge paused Noem’s action after immigrant rights advocates filed a lawsuit against DHS.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review denied there is any Somali fast-track policy, instead noting that any immigration judge in the U.S. can hear a case at any time to help with caseloads.
That’s not stopping advocates from challenging the alleged abuse in court. DHS faces a new lawsuit over the apparent fast-track policy for Somalis, brought by Minnesota-based law firm Hines Immigration Law and Minneapolis-based group Advocates for Human Rights. Filed just this week, the suit alleges Somali asylum-seekers are being singled out in a way that undermines fundamental legal protections, including right to counsel and a fair hearing. Kelsey Hines, founder of Hines Immigration Law, said 97 percent of her Somali clients’ cases were rapidly advanced, while not a single non-Somali case received similar treatment. “This is not random. This is not about efficiency or docket management,” she said in a statement. “This is an undeniably targeted policy that singles out one nationality, designed to rob them of the due process they are legally guaranteed and to strip their legal teams of the ability to adequately and ethically prepare their cases for hearing.”
About 70 years ago, the U.S. government faced a similar lawsuit in Accardi v. Shaughnessy, which eventually reached the Supreme Court. In that case, petitioner Joseph Accardi alleged that the attorney general had compiled a list of “unsavory characters” and circulated it within the DOJ, and he was on the list. Accardi, originally from Italy, subsequently had his application for suspension of deportation denied. The Supreme Court ended up ruling in Accardi’s favor, determining that immigration judges, though appointed by the attorney general, must be neutral. If they bend to the whims of the executive, then their decisions are considered unlawful.
In the meantime, Hoppock has his work cut out for him: “It’s going to be a bit of moving mountains just for me and my little set of 10 cases to get all of our stuff filed.” He says he’s wary about his Somali clients getting a fair hearing, given the volume of cases that have been rescheduled and the abbreviated lead time for hearings. Normally, it takes a judge at least an entire day to go through one asylum case, as attorneys go through a meticulous history of the asylum-seeker’s personal stories, putting forward evidence to corroborate claims and offering expert witnesses to testify, all while the judge assesses the asylum-seeker’s credibility. What Hoppock fears is that the newly reassigned judges will end up speeding through this process in order to get through their caseload.
“On paper it’s going to look like a normal trial, because the judge says ‘Good morning’ and there’s a prosecutor, but he’s speeding through it,” Hoppock said. “He’s taking over the questioning. He won’t let you give a closing argument. He won’t let certain witnesses testify. And that’s how you speed up these cases to the point that due process kind of goes out the window.”
Since Trump took office last year, the rate of asylum cases being granted has drastically dropped, while also varying by region. Hoppock acknowledged that his state of Kansas is not a paradise for asylum-seekers, but he never doubted that the court in Kansas City was fair. His Somali clients are anxious and confused as to why they are being singled out. “I think we all sort of see the writing on the wall,” Hoppock said. “We don’t know exactly why they’re being expedited, and we won’t, I think, until we finish the lawsuits.
Correction, March 28, 2026: This article originally misstated that TPS was a Biden-era program. It was from the George H.W. Bush administration.
