Trump fires 113+ immigration judges, installs military lawyers

Immigration courts aren't part of the independent judicial branch. They're administrative tribunals run by the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). Unlike federal district court judges, who serve lifetime appointments under Article III of the Constitution, immigration judges are DOJ employees appointed by the Attorney General. There's no Senate confirmation vote. There's no lifetime tenure. The Attorney General can fire them without cause, at any time.

This structure is rooted in statute: 8 U.S.C. § 1229a grants EOIR jurisdiction over removal proceedings, and implementing regulations at 8 CFR Part 1003 define the Attorney General's control over judge appointments and removals. EOIR was created in 1983 when DOJ consolidated the immigration adjudication function previously held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. For decades, both parties largely left immigration judges alone. The National Association of Immigration Judges fought for more independence, but immigration courts remained executive agency courts — and that gave the Trump administration a legal opening to fire judges wholesale.

Since January 20, 2025, the Trump DOJ has fired at least 113 immigration judges, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges. That count, confirmed after a wave of April 2026 firings, represents more than one in seven of the approximately 750 judges who began Trump's second term. Combine fired judges with resignations and retirements, and the total number of judges who've left EOIR surpasses 200, according to NPR's independent tally.

The firings didn't stop at judges. EOIR also lost over 400 legal assistants, attorney advisers, and legal administrative specialists. About 75% of the agency's attorney advisers have left. Fifty-four percent of court supervisors are gone. Twelve immigration courts have lost more than half their judges. Two courts have zero judges.

The Merit Systems Protection Board, the federal panel that hears appeals from fired federal workers, issued a pivotal ruling in early 2026. Two fired judges, Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch, had filed appeals after DOJ terminated them on February 14, 2025. An MSPB administrative judge initially agreed with them and ordered reinstatement, but the two-member full board reversed that decision, finding that immigration judges qualify as inferior officers removable at will under Article II of the Constitution. The board drew on the Supreme Court's reasoning in Seila Law (2020) and Lucia v. SEC (2018), which held that adjudicators exercising significant governmental authority can be fired without cause.

Jackler and Jaroch appealed the MSPB ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where the case remains pending as of May 2026. Senate Democrats said the ruling defies over 140 years of Supreme Court precedent on inferior officers.

In September 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized up to 600 military lawyers, Judge Advocate General's Corps officers known as JAGs, to serve as temporary immigration judges in roughly six-month assignments. The Pentagon planned to deploy them in waves of 150.

JAG lawyers are experienced litigators, but their expertise is in military law: courts-martial, contract disputes, and service member discipline. Immigration law is a distinct specialty covering asylum standards, country condition evidence, voluntary departure rules, and complex federal statute. The Army lawyers' training program was a 6-week crash course in immigration law and procedure, with a written exam before serving. The DOJ also waived its prior requirement of at least 10 years of immigration law experience. Former immigration judge David Kim, fired in September 2025, told reporters: 'Immigration law is a very complicated area of law, because it evolves so fast.' The New York City Bar Association condemned the use of JAGs as immigration judges, citing both the due process concerns and the drain on Pentagon legal capacity.

In April 2026, the administration fired six immigration judges on a single day, including several whose recent rulings had directly blocked deportations of international students connected to pro-Palestinian campus protests. Judge Roopal Patel, based in Boston, had ruled on January 29, 2026 that Secretary of State Marco Rubio's revocation of Öztürk's visa didn't legally require her deportation, and that DHS hadn't proved independent grounds for removal. Öztürk, a Turkish national, had been detained after co-authoring a newspaper op-ed criticizing her university's response to the Gaza war.

Judge Nina Froes, in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, had dismissed proceedings against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University Palestinian green card holder who'd participated in student advocacy. Both judges were within their two-year probationary periods, which the DOJ cited as legal justification. Patel told the Boston Globe after her firing: 'It's creating this climate of fear where judges are worried that if they misstep and do something that's out of line with what the administration wants, they're more subject to firing. That can erode judicial independence, it can erode due process.' With Patel and Froes gone, the NAIJ confirmed 113 total firings since January 2025.

The San Francisco immigration court shows what happens when firing outpaces hiring. At the start of 2025, San Francisco had 21 immigration judges. By early 2026, it was down to four: 14 fired, four pressured into early retirement. The DOJ announced in January 2026 it would shut the court entirely, shifting its 120,000 cases to the smaller Concord Immigration Court 28 miles away. San Francisco's court closed ahead of schedule on May 3, 2026.

The Concord court already carried 60,000 of its own cases when it absorbed San Francisco's docket. The combined backlog hit 177,827 cases. Hearings already scheduled for weeks away got pushed to as far as 2029.

Former Chicago immigration judge Carla Espinoza became one of the earliest fired judges to sue the Trump administration. Espinoza was appointed in August 2023 and received a termination notice by email in July 2025 while delivering a verdict, officially dismissed at the end of her two-year probationary period. She filed suit alleging DOJ fired her based on her prior work as an immigration defense attorney, her race, and her sex. Her complaint pointed to EOIR memos from early 2025 that characterized immigrant advocacy organizations as 'extremist' and promised to 'penalize illegal DEI preferences,' and to data showing the firings disproportionately targeted women, people of color, and judges with immigrant-defense backgrounds.

Espinoza wasn't alone. Fired judges in Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Boston filed similar suits. Two former judges whose MSPB appeals were rejected appealed to the Federal Circuit in March 2026. As of May 2026, multiple cases remain pending in federal courts.

The DOJ's new hiring campaign is branded 'deportation judges,' and the language isn't subtle. The agency ran social media ads that read: 'Deliver justice to criminal illegal aliens. Become a deportation judge. Save your country.' A Washington Post investigation in April 2026 found that many new judges had worked inside ICE's Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, the prosecution side of immigration enforcement, and brought enforcement-focused experience but little defense or asylum background.

New immigration judges also receive fewer weeks of training than previous cohorts. Former judges say that's not enough time to master a specialty that changes with every circuit court ruling. Bloomberg Law reported that new judges were trained specifically to deny asylum at higher rates.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made the administration's position explicit on May 6, 2026. He said: 'If there's judges that are just not applying the law in the way that it needs to be applied, delaying inappropriately, have backlogs that are just unacceptable, they're the folks that we're going to try to find somebody different to fill that spot.' Blanche said there were also problems with judges who weren't following the law because of sympathy towards individuals.

Critics noted that Blanche's framing conflated judicial independence with noncompliance. Under law, immigration judges are supposed to adjudicate cases on their individual merits, not on deportation-volume metrics. The National Immigration Project and the Brennan Center argued the firings created a chilling effect: judges who remained were watching colleagues get fired for decisions that applied existing case law.

House Democrats introduced the Real Courts, Rule of Law Act of 2026 on March 5, 2026, sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). The bill would transfer immigration courts out of DOJ and establish them as an independent Article I judiciary, like the Tax Court or bankruptcy courts, with judges appointed for 15-year renewable terms who can't be fired by the Attorney General.

The American Bar Association, American Immigration Lawyers Association, Federal Bar Association, and National Association of Immigration Judges all endorsed the bill. Two bipartisan commissions over the past 30 years have called for the same structural change. With Republicans controlling the House, H.R. 7836 has no path to passage. But it established a clear reform position: courts, even administrative ones, shouldn't be staffed by whichever party controls the executive branch.