EOIR Swears In 47 New Immigration Judges and 6 Temporary Immigration Judges at Columbia, SC Investiture
Opening paragraph
On September 24, 2026, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) swore in 47 new immigration judges and 6 temporary immigration judges at an investiture held at the Department of Justice’s National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina. EOIR Acting Director Sirce E. Owen and U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina Bryan P. Stirling delivered remarks; Chief Immigration Judge Teresa L. Riley administered the oath of office. Attorney General Todd Blanche appointed all 53 adjudicators.
What Happened / Key Facts
Both source documents — the press release (justice.gov/eoir/media/1462446/dl) and the accompanying biographical-summary notice (justice.gov/eoir/media/1462441/dl) — were pulled directly via curl with a browser user-agent (a prior WebFetch attempt at the same URLs mis-rendered/returned unrelated cached content; direct curl + pdftotext -layout recovered clean text on both, consistent with the prior finding in reference-eoir-adjudication-statistics-primary-source-locations that plain extraction works on EOIR PDFs without a browser fallback).
New immigration judges (47): John C. Allison, Dana D. Babbin, Jackson Beach, Jeannette M. Bernstein, Brian J. Boyd, James J. Cavagnaro, Loren Craft, Jordan D’Angelo, Ernie Dukes, Samantha Diane Ellis, Daniel Fellhauer, Zachary N. Godsey, Andrea Goode, Robert L. Gray Jr., Luis R. Guzman, M. Keiling (Keil) Hackley, Shawn P. Hammond, Melissa Handke, Hector Hernandez Jr., Felicia Holloman, Natasha Howard, David W. Illingworth II, Adam J. Jaffe, Fahimeh Kennedy, Shelly M. Kennedy, Christy J. Kisner, Dennis B. Kohlhoff Jr., William R. LaFleur II, David S. Lo, Debbie López-Carr, Jared L. Matte, Rory McGarry, Reynaldo Padilla Morin, James C. Plott, Latosha M. Powell, Yeshaya Poyurs, Veronika N. Rabon, Laura Allison Ramos, Kristina Reeves, Michele M. Renteria, Jose G. Rodriguez-Rosado, Thomas G. Shaia, Kerry Anne Vales, Anthony C. Williams, Traci Lee Cox Winder, Chak L. Wong, Margaret L. Wright.
Temporary immigration judges (6): Mark D. Baker, Thomas P. Belsky, Jeremy R. Brooks, Brian T. Frees, Kevin L. Hoffman, Jesse Schaefer.
Court assignments (from the biographical-summary notice), counted by court (n=53):
| Court | New IJs / TIJs |
|---|---|
| New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court | 8 (6 IJ + Hoffman, Schaefer TIJ) |
| San Diego Immigration Court | 4 |
| Orlando Immigration Court | 4 |
| Chelmsford Immigration Court | 3 |
| Indianapolis Immigration Court | 3 |
| Annandale Immigration Court | 2 (Ellis IJ + Brooks TIJ) |
| Chicago Immigration Court | 2 |
| Detroit Immigration Court | 2 |
| Fort Worth Immigration Adjudication Center | 2 |
| Newark Immigration Court | 2 (Wong IJ + Belsky TIJ) |
| Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center | 2 (D’Angelo IJ + Baker TIJ) |
| Salt Lake City Immigration Court | 2 (Craft IJ + Frees TIJ) |
| San Antonio Immigration Court | 2 |
| Sterling Immigration Court | 2 |
| Adelanto, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Elizabeth, Harlingen, Houston (S. Gessner Rd.), Imperial, Los Angeles (Van Nuys Blvd.), Los Angeles (West LA), Memphis, Seattle, Stewart, Tacoma | 1 each |
Totals reconcile: 47 IJ + 6 TIJ = 53, matching the press release’s stated counts and the sum of the per-court table.
Why This Event Matters
This is the most recent dated data point in the corpus’s judicial-capture thread on EOIR hiring, which previously stopped at the May 21, 2026 swearing-in of 82 judges (“largest class in EOIR’s history,” per Reuters, unconfirmed independently — see 2026-eoir-immigration-judge-firing-record). Combined with TRAC’s August 31, 2026 finding that the administration has hired 192 new judges plus 53 temporary judges cumulatively through FY2026 (2026-08-31–trac-report-279-immigration-judges-fired-resigned-38-percent-turnover), this Sept. 24 cohort of 47+6 postdates TRAC’s cutoff and is additive to that cumulative count, not included in it.
Broader Context
Part of a sustained pattern: EOIR is simultaneously removing sitting judges (see 2025-12-08–immigration-judge-purge-100-judges-fired and 2026-08-31–trac-report-279-immigration-judges-fired-resigned-38-percent-turnover) and installing new appointees at a pace exceeding attrition, changing the composition of the bench that decides asylum and removal cases. TRAC’s August 2026 report found only 43% of the 743 judges deciding asylum cases in FY2026 had served before Trump took office.
Research Gaps
- Individual background/prior-employer patterns across the 47+6 (e.g., DHS Office of Chief Counsel alumni, prosecutorial vs. defense backgrounds) were not analyzed this pass — the bio document (
justice.gov/eoir/media/1462441/dl) contains full career histories for each judge and would support that analysis. - Whether this cohort is included in, or additional to, TRAC’s “192 new + 53 temporary” cumulative FY2026 hiring figure was inferred from TRAC’s Aug 31 publication date preceding this Sept 24 event, not confirmed against TRAC’s own cutoff methodology.
Related Entries
Sources & Citations
The Cascade Ledger. “EOIR Swears In 47 New Immigration Judges and 6 Temporary Immigration Judges at Columbia, SC Investiture.” The Capture Cascade Timeline, September 24, 2026. https://capturecascade.org/event/2026-09-24--eoir-investiture-47-immigration-judges-6-temporary/