USA Today Does Puff Piece on ‘Poetic’ Mission of Fired Amnesty-Happy Immigration Judge
Brett T. | 10:30 PM on April 20, 2026
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"Fired by Trump, this immigration judge set off on the migrant trail," says USA TODAY. Good for him. He's probably happier in the highlands of Guatemala, bringing flowers as part of his "unusual, if poetic, mission" to visit the relatives of a family who won asylum in his courtroom. In fact, if you managed to get assigned to his courtroom, chances were very, very good that you would win asylum. As puff pieces go, this is one of the puffiest we've seen.
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… for the United States and won asylum in his courtroom.
Johnson, 52, served nearly a decade as an immigration judge in San Francisco, in a famously liberal circuit, hearing hundreds of asylum cases. Day in, day out, he heard stories of political and religious persecution, torture, violence, rape. He granted asylum 89% of the time.
That statistic, he believes, is likely one of the reasons the Trump administration targeted him and the San Francisco court in an effort to rid the system of alleged bias in favor of immigrants, and against the Department of Homeland Security.
He granted asylum 89 percent of the time in his famously liberal circuit? Lauren Villagran writes, almost poetically:
