- Trump has fired somewhere between 100 and 130 Immigration Judges since taking office for the second time in January 2025.
- This month the Trump administration appears to have fired between 16-22 Immigration Judges from the Immigration Courts serving New York.
Since returning to Office in January 2025, President Trump has fired over 100 Immigration Judges according to reporting from Reuters and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). In the last two weeks it appears he has fired at least 16 of the Immigration Judges from the three New York Immigration Courts; 26 Federal Plaza, 290 Broadway, and the detained docket on 201 Varick Street (NYC area, I excluded Ulster, Buffalo, and Batavia ).
The New York Immigration Judges who were terminated include Amiena Khan, the Assistant Chief Immigration Judge, who had spoken out against Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) during Trump’s first term when they tried to dissolve the National Association of Immigration Judges Union. According to the article from Reuters, Khan’s name had been removed from the Court’s staff directory by Tuesday morning along with the names of six other female Immigration Judges. Two of the Judges fired were appointed by Trump during his first term.
These terminations are difficult to reconcile with the administration’s efforts to ramp up hiring and increase the number of cases going through the Immigration Courts. However, it is consistent with Trump’s contempt for women holding positions of power or importance, and his long history of lashing out at women. Some members of the press have written about Trump’s recent escalation in this regard as he made offensive remarks and attacked the credibility and integrity of three different female journalists during press conferences for no apparent reason. Saying things like, “are you stupid?” and calling a ABC News reporter Mary Bruce, “a terrible person” the same week that he gestured at Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey and said, “quiet, piggy.”
Prior to the seven Immigration Judges that were terminated this week, Trump had fired eight Immigration Judges from the New York Immigration Courts last month. The total number of Judges in New York City has dropped from 82 to 60–nearly a 27% drop. NY1 reports that none of the Judges were given a reason for their termination. Around the country it has been the same. Many female Immigration Judges being terminated and many of the Immigration Judges terminated have previously granted asylum at higher than average rates or failed to bow to Dear Leader.
Immigration Judge Tania Nemer was shocked that despite receiving excellent performance reviews, she was terminated from her job. She believes it was because she was a woman, a dual citizen of Lebanon, and because she once ran for municipal office in Ohio as a Democrat. She has now filed a a lawsuit alleging that her termination was in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the First Amendment. While she never received any reason for her termination, during an administrative hearing that was held because she challenged it, a senior Justice Department official mentioned Judge Nemer having driving offenses from the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. At the bottom of this page you can find the initial decision from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding her discrimination claim that was filed prior to appeal in Federal Court.
Again, the terminating of these Judges contradicts the the administration’s recent efforts to hire 600 temporary Immigration Judges for Immigration Courts around the country. They recently expanded the eligibility criteria in order to be able to hire “any attorney” to serve as an Immigration Judge in order to help alleviate the backlog of cases before the Immigration Courts. If there is such an urgent need for more Immigration Judges to get through the backlog of cases then why has the administration terminated over 100 Judges and pushed another roughly 30 Immigration Judges into retiring?
NY1 further reported that Judge’s with prior removal defense experience who did not previously work for DHS made up about half of those fired. It seems quite obvious that Trump is firing Judges who grant too many cases as he perceives them to be too immigrant friendly. Immigration Judge David S. Kim was among those terminated and he had the highest asylum approval rate of all the Immigration Judges at 26 Federal Plaza in downtown New York. He was midway through a hearing when he received the email informing him of this according to a statement he gave to Mother Jones. So he had to stop in the middle of the removal hearing and inform the parties that the case would be reassigned to a different judge. Besides having the highest asylum approval rate at 26 Federal Plaza (96%), Immigration Judge Kim had another factor working against him as far as the Trump administration was concerned, he was himself an immigrant from South Korea. He was never told that these were considerations in his firing. He was never given a reason for why he was terminated in the middle of a hearing by email after serving as a Judge for over three years. However, it wasn’t too far of a leap I had to take to arrive at that conclusion based on the facts.
There hasn’t been much in the way of explanations from the administration or the DOJ but a DOJ spokeswoman gave a statement:
After four years of the Biden Administration forcing Immigration Courts to implement a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens, this Department of Justice is restoring integrity to our immigration system and encourages talented legal professionals to join in our mission to protect national security and public safety.
Department of Justice Spokesperson
I have not been able to find an official list of the Judges that were terminated, so at the moment I can only speculate that the Judges whose names are no longer listed on WebEx or the EOIR Staff Directory, must be among those who have been terminated or pushed into retirement. Among those missing names are some of the best Immigration Judges I have ever appeared before. What’s even more disturbing is that some of the Immigration Judges whose names disappeared were some of the most qualified and experienced.
It is obvious that the Trump administration is now shaping US immigration law through the use of political firings. In an Orwellian fashion that this administration seems quite fond of, the Trump DOJ actually published a memo in February expressing deep concerns regarding the Biden administration’s efforts to manipulate the Courts to push a partisan agenda. The Biden DOJ declined to extend permanent employment to five Immigration Judges who were appointed by Trump during his first term at the end of their two-year probationary period. That decision may have been partially motivated by Biden’s immigration policy and an attempt to maintain internal consistency with those policies, but those Judges did lack prior experience practicing immigration law, which may have also been an important factor. In contrast, Trump fired an entire class of incoming Immigration Judges immediately after they finished their training earlier this year. Two of those Judges that the Biden DOJ declined to extend permanent positions were reinstated by Trump in his second term. One was brought back in a supervisory position.
This gerrymandering of the Immigration Courts serves a dual purpose.
First, it removes from the bench Judges who grant asylum at higher rates or who have previously voiced concern over the President’s immigration policies.
Second, it sends a very loud and intimidating message to every Judge who remains on the bench that their job is not safe and if they don’t desire losing it, then they better get their approval rates down and avoid deciding in favor of immigrant respondents too often.
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