Another Two Bite the Dust: The Purge of Immigration Judges Continues

Long before President Trump's second term, many observers complained of the lack of independence of immigration judges, who are housed in the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the U.S. Department of Justice. Actions in his second term, including a mass purge of immigration judges viewed as being too pro-immigrant, have exacerbated the concerns with a lack of independence by immigration judges.

The independence of immigration judges is at the center of an ABC News report that

"[t]he Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who . . . dismissed the deportation cases of students advocating for Palestinian rights . . . . Roopal Patel . . . ruled . . . that there were no grounds to deport Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts . . . . Nina Froes . . . dismissed deportation proceedings against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia . . . student who was arrested . . . immediately following his citizenship interview . . . . Froes and Patel are among 113 immigration judges who have been fired during the current Trump administration. According to the National Association of Immigration Judges, six judges were terminated this past weekend alone." (bold added).