Fired Immigration Judges Test Trump’s Executive Power in Suits

Former immigration judges who say their firings were discriminatory are pushing courts to rein in the Trump administration’s claims of unfettered power to terminate executive branch employees.

At least eight fired judges, all Biden-era appointees whom the Trump administration declined to retain at the end of their two-year probationary periods, have sued. They say they were given no explanation for their firings and denied recourse by the Justice Department’s Equal Employment Opportunity staff.

The Trump administration, in response, is asserting the power to fire immigration judges for any reason. This comes as President Donald Trump has also moved to reclassify thousands of civil servants as workers without the right to appeal their terminations before an independent board.

“They’re using immigration judges as a test case for stripping federal employees of rights,” said Kevin Owen, a longtime employment lawyer who represents seven of the former immigration judges. Owen expects to file additional suits in the coming weeks.

The DOJ Executive Office for Immigration Review, which encompasses the country’s more than 70 immigration courts, has fired more than 100 judges since January 2025, about half of whom were probationary, according to National Association of Immigration Judges estimates. At the same time, the department hired more than 200 temporary and permanent immigration judges with military backgrounds or prior experience as Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.

The lawsuits from fired judges could force federal courts to weigh in on the Trump administration’s assertion of the unitary executive theory, which says the president has total control over the executive branch. That position, if left unchecked, will pressure immigration judges to issue rulings to help the administration ramp up deportations, former judges and government lawyers said.

“When you give the administration almost unfettered authority to fire or discipline immigration judges, it makes it very hard for them to be neutral adjudicators,” said Emmett Soper, a former immigration judge who served as counsel to the EOIR director during the Biden administration.

A DOJ spokesperson blamed the Biden administration for offering what they called “de facto amnesty” to immigrants and said the department “is restoring integrity to our immigration system.”

Discrimination Claims

The fired probationary judges said in their complaints they received notice they wouldn’t be made permanent judges, citing the attorney general’s authority under Article II of the Constitution, which covers executive power. The judges received positive performance reviews throughout their probationary periods, they said, and in some cases their immediate supervisors recommended they be retained.

While immigration judges, who are DOJ employees and not members of the judicial branch, have previously been dismissed at the end of their probation over performance or misconduct issues, the volume of terminations by the second Trump administration is “unprecedented,” Soper said.

An EOIR spokesperson said the office must take action if a judge shows systematic bias for or against either side.

Female ex-judges claimed they were targeted in part due to their sex. Ex-judges of Cuban, Mexican, Lebanese, and Greek heritage claim they were discriminated against for their ethnicity. Ex-judges over 40 said their age played a role. One ex-judge says he was fired in part because he’s openly gay.

The head of EOIR last year released memos saying the office would rectify past practices of “hostility” toward job applicants of certain backgrounds, and the administration subsequently fired disproportionate numbers of female and minority immigration judges, several of the complaints said.

All eight ex-judges who filed suit also said their firings were partially motivated by their prior advocacy for immigrants or affiliation with the Democratic party.

Owen, a partner at Gilbert Employment Law PC, said the majority of discrimination claims have traditionally been considered by DOJ staff and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, not the courts. But the administration says immigration judges’ equal employment claims can’t be brought via that process because civil-rights protections don’t apply to them.

DOJ attorneys argued in their motion to dismiss fired Cleveland immigration judge Tania Nemer’s suit that she isn’t entitled to relief under the Constitution or the Civil Rights Act because she was “an inferior officer” and “removable at will.”

This position “really upsets a lot of settled expectations about the fairness of the federal government as the employer” and “as an entity serving the taxpayers,” said David Lopez, the EEOC’s general counsel during the Obama administration.

Probationary immigration judges aren’t eligible to seek relief from the Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews wrongful termination claims.

Two judges fired after their probationary periods have appealed a ruling from two Republican board members affirming the attorney general’s authority to terminate their positions without restrictions.

Proving Their Case

The lawsuits, filed in various federal district courts, aim to develop more extensive case law on the Trump administration’s unitary executive argument, Owen said.

Fired judges could find it difficult to prove that protected classes were part of the calculus for their terminations, said Tamara Slater, a shareholder at Alan Lescht and Associates PC who represents clients in civil rights and antidiscrimination litigation.

“That tends to be one of the hardest pieces to prove in discrimination cases: not just that the adverse employment action was taken for a bad reason, but that it was taken for an unlawful reason,” Slater said.

The discovery process in these cases could provide a window into the so-far opaque reasoning behind the mass firings, Owen said.

From the administration’s perspective, the personnel decisions are among a wave of changes at the immigration courts to ensure judges are “fairly and impartially applying” immigration law, said Matt O’Brien, deputy executive director of the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The administration “has consistently dismissed” judges unwilling or unable to “perform their job functions correctly,” O’Brien said.

But Lopez said the firings, on top of the administration’s recruitment campaign for “deportation judges,” call into question whether the system is intended to be fair “for people whose lives really hang in the balance as they step into immigration court.”