Two immigration judges added to San Diego detention facility

Kate Morrissey Contact Reporter


The Department of Justice has appointed two new immigration judges, both former attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to hear cases at the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

The appointments double the number of judges working out of the detention facility. President Donald Trump called for more immigration judges to be assigned to work in detention facilities in a January executive order.

Olga Attia worked as a government attorney in San Diego immigration court for 20 years before becoming a judge.

Catherine Halliday-Roberts similarly worked as a government attorney in immigration courts in Los Angeles, Lancaster and San Diego for 15 years.

The judges are part of a group of 11 who will begin hearing cases across the country in July. Their appointments bring the number of immigration judges to 326, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency in the Department of Justice that hires immigration judges.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review is currently authorized to have up to 374 judges and has been working to fill those positions because of a backlog of immigration cases that has been increasing for years.

U.S. immigration courts had more than 518,000 pending cases as of September 2016, according to data from the office, with 660 of those cases pending at the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

San Diego’s immigration court had 3,750 pending cases, and the detention center in Imperial had 3,554.

The Imperial Detention Facility received two new judges in April. Last year, most cases for detainees in the Imperial facility were heard through video conference by judges working out of the San Diego court.

San Diego’s immigration court has six judges.

The Otay Mesa Detention Center is a private detention facility owned and operated by CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, and has 1,482 beds. Some of the beds are used to house U.S. Marshals Service prisoners, and the rest are used for immigration cases.

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