Top Prosecutor Defending Trump Policies Quits to Help Immigrants

Until last week, Sara Miron Bloom oversaw the US attorney’s office in Rhode Island frequently defending Trump’s immigration crackdown and other core White House policies in court.

Within days of retiring from the Justice Department, she began fighting DOJ and won the quick release of a noncitizen client who’d been detained without access to a bond hearing.

“If every week is like this week, it’s going to be a really great job,” Bloom said of her new role as legal director of freshly-launched Mass Deportation Defense. The move followed her 30-year career at DOJ, most recently as Rhode Island’s acting US attorney for all of 2025 before sliding over to serve as the office’s top deputy this year.

Bloom said in an interview that she wants to help build a network of nationwide lawyers to file emergency habeas petitions. It’s an attempt to meet an urgent demand for low or no-cost legal services for the thousands of immigrants who—under the administration’s novel interpretation that Bloom was still carrying out until very recently—face indefinite detention and deportation without the right to argue for their release in immigration court.

“I left because I wanted to do the work I’ve gone to do. I wasn’t forced out,” she said. “I hope to be part of—once again—upholding the rule of law in a system of justice from a different perspective.”

Bloom is among at least four litigators who’ve exited the Providence office this past year to battle against it on immigration policy and other Trump priorities they previously defended.

Sara Miron Bloom is sworn-in as first assistant US attorney for the District of Rhode Island by then US Attorney Zachary Cunha in January 2022.

US Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island

DOJ attorneys often depart to take on clients opposite former colleagues, but the Rhode Island situation is notable in that Bloom was her district’s top official implementing Donald Trump’s law enforcement overhaul. She and several other career lawyers from Rhode Island’s civil division have forgone lucrative law firm salaries to join nonprofits challenging the detention-without-bond policy that’s overwhelming US attorneys’ offices across the country.

In a district with only 20 to 25 assistant US attorneys, the surge in civil habeas petitions filed by people held at Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., has the entire office on rotation to try upholding the government’s policy.

Bloom herself took on at least one habeas case while leading the office last year as her civil team was busy advocating for Trump’s funding freezes and DOGE actions that were repeatedly being challenged in Rhode Island. Then, when Democratic-led states sued to block the administration’s effort to condition federal transportation grants on immigration enforcement cooperation, Bloom was lead counsel before the district court. Like most of the office’s cases defending Trump policies, she lost.

“During the year, just about everybody in the office was doing two or three roles because we lost people and everybody had to cover,” she said.

‘Sadness to Leave’

Bloom spent 25 years at the US attorney’s office in Boston, earning a reputation as an aggressive white collar prosecutor. She moved to Providence in 2022 to become the office’s first assistant for a Biden-appointed US attorney, replacing him as Rhode Island’s temporary top prosecutor a few weeks into the Trump administration.

She stayed in charge until the end of December when Attorney General Pam Bondi tapped a former Rhode Island state prosecutor, Charles Calenda, to lead the office. Bloom praised Calenda’s performance over the past few months, yet on March 13 exited as his first assistant to pursue the new venture.

“What’s happening in the world motivated me to do what I’m doing now. I think that I feel torn between wanting to do what I’m doing now and feeling that it’s actually important that people of integrity still be there, and be supported,” she said. “It is truthfully with still a fair amount of, not regret because I’m very happy doing what I just started doing, but sadness to leave the people, the mission, and the work that I loved doing.”

Bloom’s former civil chief Kevin Love Hubbard said learning last summer that DHS would be taking the position that all noncitizens who are arrested must be detained without a bond hearing “tipped the scales” for his departure.

Rather than stay on heading the unit responsible for defending this policy, he left in August to join the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island where he counsels noncitizens in habeas petitions and has filed broader challenges in other Trump immigration matters.

Hubbard said he decided he could no longer serve in a DOJ where leaders messaged “your only role is to serve the president,” but he still respects the “consummate professionals” remaining who now litigate against him.

He shares Bloom’s view that it’s critical for experienced attorneys to persist at DOJ.

“I think it is a great loss to the people of the United States and to the people of the state of Rhode Island that Sara Bloom, who is one of the finest attorneys I’ve ever met, is no longer representing them,” Hubbard said. “She’s also an example of someone who stayed as long as possible inside the government, as many other people still choose to do every day, to be as good public servants they can be in extremely difficult circumstances.”

Bloom didn’t blame Trump officials in an administration that’s reined in US attorneys’ independence. The appeal of starting this nonprofit is rooted in what she’s observed about the impact of immigration proceedings that separate families.

“When I think about what it meant that my grandparents could immigrate to this country and how that has benefited our generations, and that all of that happens often without somebody being represented,” Bloom said, “that seems like something that I want to be active in and that needs every resource we can find.”