Two judges left Minnesota’s federal immigration court in August, intensifying staffing pressure at the Fort Snelling court as it handles roughly 33,000 pending cases and an increasingly compressed hearing schedule, according to reporting published Monday by the Minnesota Star Tribune. Nathan M. Hansen resigned only months after joining the bench, while longtime immigration judge Sarah Mazzie moved to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis.

The departures come during a period of unusually heavy activity at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, where Minnesota’s immigration court operates as part of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR. The Star Tribune reported that the two exits leave four full-time immigration judges responsible for a docket that has been accelerated over the past year as the federal government seeks faster resolution of removal proceedings.

Hansen’s departure was especially abrupt. The Justice Department appointed him in April as part of a group of 15 new immigration judges and 17 temporary immigration judges assigned to courts around the country. An EOIR announcement dated April 8 said Hansen had spent more than two decades in private practice in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area before taking the federal position.

Hansen left after about four months. In comments described by the Star Tribune, he said immigration judges routinely faced long working days and that the position had become an 11- to 12-hour daily commitment that reduced the time he could spend with his family. During his brief tenure, the newspaper reported, Hansen decided 180 asylum claims and granted two of them. He did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment about his departure.

Mazzie’s exit removes a far more experienced judge from the Minnesota bench. She had served as an immigration judge for about a decade, including a period on the Board of Immigration Appeals. Before becoming a judge, she represented the federal government in immigration matters. Court records cited by the Star Tribune show that Mazzie is now working in the civil division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis.

The Justice Department did not provide the newspaper with a detailed assessment of how losing the two judges would change hearing dates or case assignments. A department spokesman said, however, that an immigration judge located elsewhere in the United States can hear a Minnesota case. That flexibility has become increasingly important as EOIR uses internet-based hearings and judges from other jurisdictions to redistribute workload across the national court system.

That approach was already visible in Minnesota this week. The Star Tribune reported that Kansas City immigration judge Jared A. Grimmer had three Minnesota matters listed on a Fort Snelling lobby docket Monday. Remote adjudication allows EOIR to add judicial capacity without physically transferring a judge, although it can also mean that attorneys, respondents and witnesses are appearing before judges hundreds of miles away.

Fort Snelling has also relied heavily on large master-calendar sessions, which are preliminary proceedings used to address charges, representation, applications for relief and future scheduling. The newspaper reported that some recent calendars have assigned as many as 100 cases to one judge in a single day. On Monday, Judge Kalin Ivany had 94 matters on her docket, with most morning participants appearing through the Webex video platform.

The accelerated pace has broader consequences because immigration proceedings frequently require substantial preparation. Respondents may seek asylum or other forms of relief, submit evidence, obtain attorneys and prepare testimony before an individual merits hearing. Government lawyers must also review records and litigate the cases. When hearing dates are moved forward or cases are reassigned to different judges, both sides may have less time to adjust their preparation and schedules.

Minnesota has been one focus of the administration’s effort to move immigration matters more quickly. Earlier this year, lawyers and nonprofit advocates challenged what they described in federal court as an accelerated process affecting non-detained Somali respondents. A federal judge wrote in April that plaintiffs alleged some hearings originally scheduled for 2027 or 2028 had been moved forward to 2026. The government denied that it had created the policy alleged by the plaintiffs, and the court declined to grant the preliminary relief they requested.

The staffing problem at Fort Snelling is part of a much larger national challenge. The Star Tribune reported that the U.S. immigration-court backlog stands at about 3.1 million cases. EOIR said in April that the pending caseload had previously exceeded 4 million and that the agency had reduced the backlog by more than 380,000 cases since January 2025. Even with those reductions, immigration courts continue to face a volume of pending proceedings far beyond the level handled by the system in earlier decades.

Immigration judges occupy a distinctive position within the federal government. Unlike federal district judges appointed under Article III of the Constitution, immigration judges are Justice Department employees working within EOIR. Their decisions can determine whether a person is ordered removed or qualifies for asylum or another form of immigration relief, subject to administrative and, in some circumstances, federal-court review.

The latest Fort Snelling staffing changes therefore create a practical question for EOIR: whether the agency can maintain its accelerated Minnesota calendar while replacing two judges or shifting more cases to adjudicators in other cities. The Justice Department has continued recruiting immigration judges nationally, but no new Minnesota appointments have been announced since Hansen joined the court in April, according to the Star Tribune.

For people with pending cases, the immediate effect may vary considerably. Some hearings could proceed before Minnesota judges as scheduled, while others may be handled remotely by judges assigned to other immigration courts. EOIR’s online systems and individual hearing notices remain the controlling sources for respondents and attorneys seeking current information about specific proceedings.

The departures also illustrate the competing pressures facing the immigration judiciary: federal officials are seeking faster case completion while judges must conduct hearings, evaluate evidence and issue decisions in matters that can carry significant consequences for individuals and families. With tens of thousands of Minnesota cases still awaiting resolution, Fort Snelling’s ability to balance those demands will depend increasingly on staffing, remote judicial assignments and the way EOIR manages its rapidly changing calendar.