The Trump administration appeared to be unmoved by a discrimination suit filed Monday by an Ohio judge when later that day it let go eight immigration judges in Manhattan.
The judges who worked out of 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan were terminated, according to an official in the National Association of Immigration Judges.
Earlier Monday, Tania Nemer sued the Justice Department on the grounds she was terminated from her post as an Ohio immigration judge because of her gender, a citizen of Lebanon and was a Democratic candidate for local office.
About 200 immigration judges have resigned or been let go as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s effort to trim inefficiencies and spending by encouraging federal employees to leave their jobs. Roughly 100 of those were fired, the NAIJ official said.
The judges were terminated despite a backlog of 3.4 million immigration cases in the federal system, according to Syracuse University’s TRAC Reports.
The War Department said in September it planned to send 600 military lawyers to serve temporarily as immigration judges — but so far only 25 have gone through the required training and have begun hearing cases, the NAIJ official said.
Just 11 new permanent judges have been installed, despite Congress creating 800 federal immigration judiciary jobs as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Nemer’s suit, filed in Washington, DC, federal court, claims she was sacked on Feb. 5, in part, because she unsuccessfully ran for office earlier on in her career. She alleged this violated her Constitutional right to engage in political activity. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images |
The Trump administration has fired eight immigration judges in New York City, sharply cutting staff at one of the country’s busiest immigration courts as President Donald Trump vows to speed up deportations, The New York Times reported late Monday.
The judges, including an assistant chief immigration judge who supervised colleagues at the court inside 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, were told their jobs were over as part of a nationwide shake-up of the immigration bench, the paper said, citing union and Justice Department officials.
The New York firings are part of a broader wave: Roughly 90 immigration judges have been dismissed across the United States this year, with only 36 replaced, according to the Times. That represents a sizable churn in a system that handles hundreds of thousands of deportation and asylum cases per year and already faces a record case backlog of more than 3.7 million matters nationwide.
Why It Matters
Immigration judges decide whether people can stay in the U.S. or must be removed. Cutting dozens of experienced adjudicators while the Trump administration is rolling out a mass deportation agenda risks deepening an already severe backlog and raises fresh questions about due process in immigration courts.
Trump’s plan for large-scale removals is running headlong into a bottleneck of nearly 4 million pending cases, prompting Stephen Yale-Loehr, immigration attorney who teaches at Cornell Law School, to previously tell Newsweek, “you just cannot deport people without a hearing.”
Union officials and former judges previously told Newsweek that earlier rounds of firings and forced departures inside the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)—the Justice Department agency that runs the courts—have added years to wait times in asylum cases, with some hearings now pushed into 2028.
The latest dismissals in New York cut into the roster at 26 Federal Plaza, which employs just over 30 immigration judges, shrinking the bench at a courthouse that has become central to Trump’s enforcement push in the city.
What To Know
According to the Times, all eight judges worked out of 26 Federal Plaza, the downtown Manhattan complex housing the city’s main immigration court and local headquarters for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Among those dismissed was Amiena A. Khan, assistant chief immigration judge at the courthouse, who oversaw other judges there, the paper said.
The National Association of Immigration Judges confirmed the firings, while a Justice Department official also acknowledged the dismissals on condition of anonymity. EOIR declined to answer detailed questions about why the judges were let go, including whether performance, ideology or caseload decisions played a role. --->READ MORE HERE
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