U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, visited San Diego’s immigration court Wednesday, he said, to observe and exercise congressional oversight – emerging with frustrations about inefficiencies in the backlogged system as the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort rolls on.

“We can do better,” Padilla said in a short availability afterward, then pointing to the firing of immigration judges across the country. “What is not helping us do better is what this administration is doing in terms of dismissing immigration judges. We need more, not fewer.”

Padilla sat in a hearing for about a half-hour, watching a presiding immigration judge remotely call two cases that were stalled by change-of-address paperwork. Padilla was accompanied by Jewish Family Service’s executive director of imm

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