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...
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