Dozens of immigration judges across the country have been fired by the Trump administration in recent months with no explanation for their dismissals.

From coast to coast, nearly four dozen judges have lost their positions as the immigration court system faces a record backlog of more than 3 million cases.

Many of those dismissed had previously worked in immigrant defense, prompting questions

about whether the firings are part of the administration's broader hardline approach to immigration.

We're joined now by one of those former judges, Emmett Soper. He served as a judge in Virginia. Thank you

for being with us. Thank you for having me. So let's start there. You are a longtime employee at the Justice Department, a career staff for almost 20 years.

Do you believe your termination was connected in any way to your prior work defending immigrants?

I don't know exactly why I was terminated.

I was terminated without any warning.

The letter I received telling me that I was terminated

did not give any reasons for my termination.

So I'm a little bit in the dark as to why I was terminated.

I had been a Department of Justice employee for a long time.

I had also been an immigration judge for a long time.

They fired me without any warning nor any explanation.

What does the wave of firings mean for the backlog of cases

and for those immigrants who are waiting for their day in court?

Well, the wave of unlawful firings of immigration judges

is already exacerbating the backlog at the immigration courts.

As judge after judge after judge gets

fired unlawfully, their cases, and each judge typically handles hundreds or thousands of cases,

have to be redistributed to the judges who remain on the courts. As each judge gets fired,

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