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Judge David Kim was on the bench for a merits hearing on an asylum case at 26 Federal Plaza Thursday afternoon when he received an email informing him he’d been laid off, “effective today.”

“I had to stop the hearing,” he recalled.

Kim was one of two immigration judges, both immigrants themselves, in New York City who spoke with THE CITY on Friday about their abrupt terminations and the grim and chaotic months leading up to them, as masked ICE agents lurked in the immigration courts arresting people attending previously routine proceedings.

The othe

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