Immigration Judges Fired: Numbers, Court Impact, and Lawsuits

Since President Trump returned to office in January 2025, the Department of Justice has fired immigration judges at a pace that has reshaped the nation’s immigration bench. More than 100 immigration judges have been fired, roughly another 100 have resigned or retired, and the courts have lost about a quarter of their judges in little over a year. ¹² The dismissals are now the subject of a rare full-court appeal at the Federal Circuit that will test whether the president can remove these judges at will.

How Many Judges Have Been Fired

At the start of 2025, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review had about 726 permanent immigration judges and 43 assistant chief immigration judges. The administration replaced EOIR’s leadership first, then began terminating judges still inside their two-year probationary windows. Tania Nemer of the Cleveland Immigration Court was the first, fired in the middle of a hearing. ¹

The firings came in waves. More than 80 judges had been dismissed by September 2025. ³⁴⁵ By late 2025 the administration had moved past probationary judges and begun cutting tenured ones. ¹

The National Association of Immigration Judges counted at least 113 firings by early 2026, about half of them still in their probationary period. ⁶ Counting resignations and retirements, 202 judges who were working in early 2025 were gone by February 2026, leaving 520 permanent immigration judges and 33 assistant chief immigration judges on the bench. ¹

Why These Judges

The DOJ has described the terminations as routine personnel decisions and has not explained its criteria. The notices themselves offered no individualized reason, stating only that keeping the judge was “not in the best interest of the Agency.” ⁷ Several fired judges received severance pay, which they took as a sign the terminations weren’t for cause. ⁴

Outside data suggests a pattern. The eight New York judges fired on December 1, 2025, had granted asylum at an average rate of 85.5 percent, more than 20 percentage points above the New York average before Trump took office, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. ⁸ The New York Times described the targets more broadly as judges “seen as insufficiently supportive of the president’s aggressive enforcement agenda.” ⁹

Individual cases reinforced the impression. George Pappas, who had handled more than 2,000 cases in Boston, called his firing “arbitrary, unfair” and “an attack on the rule of law.” He and Jennifer Peyton, fired over the Fourth of July weekend in 2025, both said they had been pressured to grant motions to dismiss cases, which stripped respondents of pending proceedings and left them open to immediate ICE arrest in courthouses. ¹⁰

Boston judge Roopal Patel, appointed under the Biden administration, ruled in January 2026 that the State Department’s revocation of Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk’s visa did not require her removal. ² On April 10, 2026, near the end of her probationary period, Patel was fired by email during a hearing, one of three Massachusetts judges dismissed that day. An EOIR spokesperson denied the termination was tied to any specific ruling, saying the agency evaluates judges on “impartiality, adherence to the law, productivity and professionalism.” ¹¹ The Department of Homeland Security appealed Patel’s Öztürk decision.

The Administration’s Strategy

Immigration judges are not Article III judges. They are DOJ employees under the attorney general, and ultimately the president. Federal regulation tells them to use “independent judgment,” but gives them none of the structural protection federal judges have. ⁹

The administration argues the court system slows enforcement to the point of dysfunction. President Trump said, “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years.” Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “The judicial process is for Americans. Immediate deportation is for illegal aliens.” ¹² According to Forbes reporting based on a book about his role, Miller has steered immigration policy from the White House, set ICE arrest quotas aimed at one million deportations a year, and pushed to bypass due process protections. ¹³

EOIR’s acting director issued a memorandum in June 2025 warning that judges exhibiting bias “in favor of an alien” would face disciplinary action. ⁴ New performance metrics in September 2025 required judges to hear four to six cases a day. By early 2026, newly hired judges were being instructed to grant asylum only in “rare circumstances.” ¹⁴ Asylum grant rates fell to an average of 20 percent during Trump’s second term, compared with 42 percent under Biden, dropping to 7 percent by February 2026. ⁹

Replacing the Bench

The administration has rebuilt the bench quickly and on its own terms. In May 2026, EOIR swore in 77 new immigration judges and 5 temporary judges, which the agency called its largest class ever, and said the DOJ had hired 153 permanent judges in fiscal year 2026, bringing the bench to nearly 700. ¹⁵ Many of the new permanent hires came from DHS immigration prosecution or military legal practice. ⁹

A separate track brought in military lawyers directly. In August 2025, the DOJ issued a final rule removing prior-experience requirements for temporary immigration judges, allowing the EOIR director to designate “any attorney.” ¹⁶ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized up to 600 JAG Corps attorneys to serve on immigration benches. Standard training for a new immigration judge runs about six weeks, with a year of mentorship and two years of quarterly reviews. The JAG attorneys received roughly two weeks. ¹⁷

Federal data from November 2025 showed military judges ordering removal or voluntary departure in 90 percent of their cases, compared with 63 percent for other judges. ⁵ Christopher Day, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, began hearing cases in Annandale, Virginia, in late October 2025. In November he concluded 11 asylum cases and granted relief in six. He was fired around December 2, after five weeks on the bench; the DOJ declined to say why. ¹⁸ The New York City Bar Association has argued the program creates due process problems because JAG attorneys remain subject to military hierarchy and the Uniform Code of Military Justice while they sit as judges.

What the Firings Have Done to the Courts

The immigration courts started 2025 with a backlog of about 4.1 million cases. ¹⁶ Firing judges while the backlog ran that high worsened the problem in many courts, even as the administration pointed to a reduction of more than 447,000 cases since January 2025. ¹⁵

San Francisco shows what that looks like on the ground. The court at 100 Montgomery Street began 2025 with 21 judges. By early 2026 it had four judges and one supervisor handling nearly 121,000 pending cases, and the court is set to close by the end of 2026, with its cases moving to Concord or going remote. Courts in Aurora, Colorado and Oakdale, Louisiana were left with no judges at all, only supervisors. Hearings in some locations have been pushed as far out as 2030. ¹⁹

The Legal Fight

The firings have produced a cluster of lawsuits over whether the president can terminate immigration judges without cause and bypass civil service protections. One case now stands out.

Jackler at the Federal Circuit

Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch, two assistant chief immigration judges fired in February 2025 without any pre-termination process, appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board. In August 2025 an MSPB administrative judge found the terminations violated due process and ordered them reinstated. ²⁰

The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel then issued an opinion asserting that the terminations were permitted under Article II, which gives the president power over “inferior officers,” and directing MSPB administrative judges to defer to that view. ²⁰ On March 20, 2026, the two-member Republican-controlled MSPB reversed the reinstatement order, holding that immigration judges are inferior officers who can be fired at will and that the board lacked jurisdiction to review their terminations. ²¹

Jackler and Jaroch took the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 26, 2026, and petitioned for en banc review. On June 17, 2026, the Federal Circuit granted that petition, agreeing to hear the case before the full court rather than a three-judge panel. ²² En banc review is uncommon at that court. A group of Senate Democrats filed an amicus brief for the fired judges, and oral arguments are expected in the fall of 2026. ²³²⁴

The core question is whether the president’s Article II power to remove inferior officers overrides the Civil Service Reform Act’s protections for career federal employees. The administration says it does. The fired judges argue the government is misreading Supreme Court precedent to invent a new category of federal workers who can be dismissed at will whenever their work involves discretion. ²⁴ The ruling is expected to affect other federal employees the administration has sought to remove under the same theory. ²¹

Discrimination Suits

At least eight former judges, most appointed under Biden, have filed federal lawsuits alleging their firings were discriminatory, with claims based on sex, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and political views. ⁶ They include:

Nemer v. Bondi (D.D.C., filed December 2025). Tania Nemer, the first judge fired, alleges discrimination; a DOJ motion to dismiss was fully briefed as of June 2026 and remained pending.²⁵
Lilien v. Blanche (N.D. Cal., filed May 2026). Kyra Lilien alleges termination based on gender, age, political views, and her ties to immigrant rights groups.²⁶
Pappas v. Blanche (D. Mass., filed May 2026). George Pappas alleges discrimination based on Greek heritage.⁶
McNary v. Blanche (C.D. Cal., filed May 2026). Christopher McNary alleges discrimination based on sexual orientation.⁶

In each case, the DOJ has argued that immigration judges are inferior officers who can be removed at will and that standard civil rights and employment protections don’t apply. ⁶ The plaintiffs are using discovery to try to pry open the internal reasoning behind the mass terminations.

What Congress Has Done

Congressional action has been limited. Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin sent letters to Attorney General Pam Bondi in March and August 2025 asking for data on the firings and the justifications for each one. In his August letter Durbin said he had received no response to his earlier request. ²⁷

In December 2025, Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Juan Vargas introduced a bill setting minimum qualifications for temporary immigration judges, including prior appellate service, administrative law experience, or at least 10 years in immigration law. The bill had no Republican cosponsors and was not expected to advance. ²⁸²⁹³⁰

For now, the immediate legal question sits with the full Federal Circuit. If the court agrees with the administration that immigration judges are inferior officers removable at will, civil service protections for the bench will largely dissolve and the pattern of firings is likely to continue. If it sides with the fired judges, the reinstatement fight returns to the MSPB and the discrimination cases proceed on firmer ground. Either way, the structural setup that put judges inside the agency that prosecutes their cases will remain the same until Congress changes it.

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