Donald Trump’s administration abruptly fired two judges after they refused to rubber-stamp his demands that two international students be deported for protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestine.
The firings represented the latest phase of the White House’s effort to reshape the country’s immigration courts. The administration has now dismissed dozens of immigration judges and, according to those on the bench, has pressured judges to deny asylum claims and order deportations, the New York Times reported.
Unlike federal judges in the independent judicial branch, immigration judges work for the Justice Department and are hired and fired by the attorney general.
The two judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, were terminated alongside four colleagues on Friday. They oversaw high-profile cases filed by the government against students Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi, the Times reported.
Since winning a second term, Trump has aggressively sought to reshape the immigration courts— with dramatic results. Judges are ordering a record number of people deported and granting asylum at the lowest rate since at least 2009. Cases are being resolved faster, and the backlog of claims that soared under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has begun to decline.
Ozturk and Mahdawi were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last year. Their detentions were part of a series of arrests targeting international students who had publicly expressed support for Palestinian causes or participated in protests on U.S. campuses that the Trump administration labeled antisemitic.
Ozturk, a Turkish-born student at Tufts University, had her student visa status repealed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio after writing an article in a student newspaper criticizing the university leadership’s stances on Palestinian causes. The government similarly attempted to deport Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University and green card holder, because of his involvement in campus protests. Rubio stated his continued presence in the country could “potentially undermine” U.S. foreign policy.
Civil liberties advocates characterized the arrests as intended to stifle free speech. The government filed cases in immigration court to deport both students.
Patel, an immigration judge in Boston, ruled in January that there were no grounds to deport Ozturk. Froes reached a similar conclusion in Mahdawi’s case. Both judges had been appointed by the Biden administration in 2024 and were approaching the end of an initial two-year probationary term before their terminations.
When asked if ruling against Mahdawi might have preserved her job, Froes expressed uncertainty. “I don’t know what’s in the minds of other people,” she said. “But I can’t imagine it was helpful.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Times.
A U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to the Times that six judges had been fired on Friday, with four of them in probationary status.
Before Trump returned to office, it was rare for immigration judges to be terminated. His administration has dismissed more than 100 judges so far. Additionally, the administration has hired more than 140 permanent and temporary judges viewed as more aligned with Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Froes, a judge at the immigration court in Chelmsford, Mass., said she was conducting an asylum hearing on Friday afternoon when she received an email notifying her of dismissal. She informed lawyers for both sides that she needed to halt the case and signed out of the virtual hearing.
“I fully expected it,” she said regarding her firing, citing the number of judges dismissed by the Trump administration.
Froes also stated she had been unaware of Mahdawi’s case’s high-profile status when hearing it. “You have so many people coming before you,” she said. “You don’t go Google people’s names. That’s not how it works. You look at the record.”
Patel, like many immigration judges interviewed by the Times, indicated the Trump administration had made its intentions clear regarding deportations. “It was a pressure I at least tried to actively resist,” she said in an interview. “All people in the United States are entitled to due process, and everyone deserves to have their cases adjudicated fully and fairly.”
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