How One Anti-Migrant Bureaucrat is Quietly Reshaping American Asylum

His name is Judge Paul A. McCloskey. Here's what what we know:

Full Disclosure: I could find literally no photographs of Judge McCloskey online (a first in Migrant Insider’s extensive coverage of the courts), so resorted to making this image using AI.

WASHINGTON — If you ever want to see what systemic, calculated hostility looks like in real time, take a trip to the Arlington Immigration Court.

You won’t find loud, theatrical outbursts or cartoonish movie villains. Instead, you will find Judge Paul A. McCloskey: a mild-mannered, career-long bureaucrat with no Googleable photos of himself on the Internet whose quiet, procedural precision serves as a highly effective deportation machine.

For years, local advocates have known McCloskey as the place where asylum hopes go to die. But now, his brand of institutional cruelty has been exported nationwide. His promotion to serve as a Temporary Appellate Immigration Judge on the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA)—the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration law—is a major blow to…