Trump officials hire ‘deportation judges’ with less training, experience

A divorce lawyer who has vowed to “fight exclusively for the rights of men.” A Minnesota attorney who championed Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration’s raids in Minneapolis. And a judge who was once lambasted by an appeals court for denying humanitarian protection to a Serbian man because he didn’t look “overtly gay.”

All three are among the “deportation judges” recently hired as part of President Donald Trump’s quest to clear a massive case backlog and fulfill his goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year.

The hiring spree follows the Justice Department’s firings of more than 100 immigration judges since Trump took office, an unprecedented purge, and a similar number have retired or resigned. More than 140 new judges have been appointed so far to replace them, many of whom have no stated experience practicing immigration law and, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges, are receiving less training than previously offered.

Former judges who were fired say they fear Trump is forcing out judges who rule against the government and replacing them with loyalists and others being pressured to help carry out a single goal: Deport immigrants.

“They’re trying to create a malleable workforce that will do what they want without question,” said Kerry Doyle, a former ICE official who was hired to serve as an immigration judge in Massachusetts under President Joe Biden and then fired last year before she could begin hearing cases. “That’s what I think the goal is.”

The firings come as the Trump administration is simultaneously implementing policies that make it more difficult for immigrants to prevail in court. Under new orders from the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, judges have been refusing to grant bond hearings and are dismissing cases at the government’s request so that defendants can be arrested. They are also being advised to grant asylum more sparingly. Asylum rejections doubled from 2024 to 2025.

The recruits are being offered signing bonuses, the opportunity to work from home, and even the flexibility to keep their day jobs and moonlight as judges after hours. New hires can earn up to $207,500 a year and 25 percent signing bonuses in some Democrat led-states such as California.

Two-thirds of the new judges have no immigration law experience listed in their online biographies, a break from previous years when many, if not most, candidates had experience in that area, according to a Washington Post analysis of available Justice Department announcements. Only 24 percent had worked for the Department of Homeland Security, ICE or the immigration courts. The National Association of Immigration Judges said the Justice Department has cut training from nearly five weeks to three.

Court officials did not respond to questions about the shorter training program but said the classroom and on-the-job training was extensive and ongoing, and includes instruction on sensitive topics like minors in removal proceedings. Daren K. Margolin, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the little-known agency responsible for deciding who gets to stay in the United States and who gets removed, declined requests for an interview but lauded the new judges in a recent press release.

“EOIR remains committed to reducing the immigration court backlog and unwinding the policies of the Biden Administration that included a de facto open border and amnesty,” he said. “These new highly qualified immigration judges have sworn to decide the cases before them based on the law — that is, the laws passed by the United States Congress.”

The hirings and firings have added to concerns that Trump has politicized the Justice Department and is jeopardizing people’s confidence in the immigration court. Some lawyers fear people with bona fide asylum cases are giving up their claims because they don’t believe their hearing will be fair.

“It sends a message that: Don’t trust these courts,” said Muzaffar A. Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “That is not good for the immigrants, it’s not good for the rule of law, and it’s not good for the ultimate integrity and reputation of our court system.”

The Trump administration began firing immigration judges on the first day of the president’s second term.

The EOIR’s chief judge and three other high-ranking officials were among the first to go. Dozens of other immigration judges were later fired in Hartford, Connecticut, Chicago, San Francisco, New York and other cities.

Doyle, a lawyer with 30 years of experience, was fired on Valentine’s Day last year, along with all 12 other judges who were part of her hiring class. As a top ICE official in the Biden administration, she wrote a 2022 memo instructing ICE attorneys to set aside the cases of immigrants who were not a top priority for deportation.

Under Biden’s policies, that category included most undocumented immigrants who had not committed any crimes, especially if they had families and U.S. citizen relatives. But the Trump administration has different priorities, seeking to deport anyone in the country illegally.

Doyle believes she and the others who have been fired were let go “because we got hired by President Biden. I think it’s as deep as that.”

A spokesperson for the EOIR declined to comment, stating that the agency does not discuss personnel matters.

In public statements and internal communications, Trump administration officials have accused some immigration judges of failing to uphold the law. Sirce E. Owen emailed all immigration judges in June, when she was serving as acting director of the EOIR, and, without identifying anyone, accused some of “exhibiting bias” against the government and warned that they could face discipline.

“Bias against DHS is just as corrosive to the integrity of EOIR as bias against aliens,” she wrote. “Both parties in immigration court are entitled to a neutral, impartial adjudicator, and EOIR will not tolerate improper animus directed at either party.”

Immigration Judge David K. S. Kim had approved more than 90 percent of his asylum-related cases for three years, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that monitors immigration case data — a higher share than most judges. He said he followed the law, weighing evidence, testimony and medical records. Most defendants had lawyers to argue on their behalf, which he said improved their chances in court.

“Some of the cases involve horrific details of past trauma,” he said. “Some of them are not telling the truth and I can tell. Those cases I deny.”

Then he got an email from Owen while he was in the middle of a hearing with the subject line “Notice of Termination.” The letter told him to turn in all government property that day.

Kim stopped the hearing and told the puzzled immigrant, who had been under cross-examination by DHS, that another judge would be assigned to the case. He gathered his belongings and said goodbye to his colleagues, one of whom started to cry.

Kim said Owen did not state why he was being let go. He surmised he was being punished because he had approved so many asylum cases, and that officials wanted to “scare my colleagues who had not been fired.”

Months later, he wonders what happened to his cases, particularly that of a man from North Africa who said he feared for his life if DHS managed to deport him. The case was complex and Kim said he was working on a written decision for it. But he was fired before he could finish it.

“If that person were deported to his home country, it was very likely that he could be killed,” Kim said. “That’s why I was very careful.”

Asylum rejections more than doubled to 82,371 last fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025. The percentage of asylum cases granted by judges plummeted to less than 5 percent in February, compared with 48 percent in the same month in 2024 under Biden, according to TRAC.

Trump officials have emphasized that the judges are government attorneys who serve under the supervision of the attorney general — and ultimately at the will of the president — and can be fired at any moment. The judges’ union said firings have happened sporadically in the past, such as for disciplinary issues, but the union has never seen so many firings, and for no stated reason.

Multiple judges have filed lawsuits or administrative complaints challenging their firings.

As firings continued, the Justice Department launched a recruitment drive urging people to sign up to “help write the next chapter of America” and become a “deportation judge.” Applicants are promised the chance to “define America for generations” and “restore integrity and honor” to the immigration court system.

The Trump administration also dispatched military lawyers to the immigration courts to help fill vacancies. One of them, Christopher Day, became a whistleblower in March, telling Congress that the more streamlined training that incoming judges are getting today is “completely inadequate and highly biased,” according to a copy of the letter sent to Congressional committees. Day declined to comment through his lawyer.

Former judges said the hiring process previously took months, sometimes years. New judges would then spend five weeks observing court hearings, taking classes in immigration law and court management, participating in a mock trial at the EOIR’s Virginia headquarters, and practicing hearing cases with a mentor judge by their side. Some of the new judges are considered permanent employees, while others like the military attorneys were hired on a temporary basis.

There are currently 700 immigration judges nationwide to handle well over 3 million cases.

Day, an Army reservist, wrote in his letter to Congress that EOIR’s director told the recruits many judges are “far too liberal” in granting asylum and that they could be fired in six months if they fail to meet “expectations.”

Day wrote that a court administrator in Texas pressured him to complete three asylum cases daily, and an appellate judge, Keith Hunsucker, told the new hires that asylum should be granted sparingly — offering the example of, “Maybe if you were Jewish and escaping Nazi Germany in 1943 you should get it.” A Justice Department spokeswoman said Hunsucker disputes Day’s account, and that his alleged statement “is not accurate.”

The right to seek asylum has been a bedrock principle since the aftermath of World War II, when Western nations shaped international treaties that said immigrants should not be deported to countries where they could be harmed or killed. Under U.S. law, immigrants may seek asylum if they fear persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or another specific reason that makes them a target.

“The overall message seemed to be pushing as many cases as possible, with little regard for scheduling, due process, or procedural rights,” Day wrote. He was fired in December, two months after his appointment, and he wrote that a supervisor said he had granted too many cases.

Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge who now writes for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit that favors enforcement, said he was confident that the immigration courts were hiring experienced lawyers who could address the massive caseload. Training has varied for years, he said, noting that he had just three weeks of instruction prior to being appointed in 2006. He emphasized that all attorneys are taught how to apply the law fairly in school, regardless of the subject.

If immigrants disagree with a judge’s decision, they can appeal.

“There are safeguards built into the system,” he said. “Remember immigration courts aren’t the last court. They’re the first court.”

The recruits include many with Republican ties, such as former New York state assemblyman Kieran M. Lalor, who was appointed in March to serve as a judge in a rural part of the state. As a lawmaker he opposed state funding to provide legal aid to immigrants facing deportation, telling the media in 2017 that it would reward “lawbreakers.”

He did not respond to requests for comment.

Another recruit is Melissa Isaak, who alleged in a 2021 speech at an anti-feminist convention that accusations of domestic abuse by men against women and children are “one of the most abused allegations in family court.” Domestic violence can also come up in immigration court, because victims often cite their experience as grounds for seeking asylum. Isaak’s official court bio did not detail any immigration-related experience.

Isaak, an Army veteran and reservist, was a defense attorney for three of the Jan. 6, 2021 rioters at the U.S. Capitol after Trump lost the election, though she later withdrew from two of those cases, federal court records show. She also represented Alabama Republican Roy Moore in a defamation case after he denied sexual misconduct allegations that derailed his campaign for the Senate. In 2024, Isaak’s law firm posted on Facebook that an $83.3 million jury award to a writer who alleged Trump sexually assaulted her decades earlier was a “travesty of justice.”

In the 2021 speech, Isaak said there were two types of women: a “real woman” who supports her husband and a promiscuous woman who is a “warm wet hole.” She also argued that statistics show more men suffer from domestic abuse than women; FBI statistics show most victims are women. Isaak has been assigned to hear cases in Atlanta immigration court as a temporary judge, who typically are contracted for six-month periods. She did not respond to requests for comment.

Carey Holliday, a former Republican Party state treasurer, served as a Miami immigration judge from 2006 to 2009, when he stepped down following a DOJ watchdog report that found the Bush administration had hired immigration judges based on their political leanings, in violation of federal law. While the report did not name him, one of those hired matched Holliday’s description. The report said that judge was appointed based on a White House recommendation and did not undergo a job interview.

In 2010, a federal appeals court found Holliday had “relied impermissibly on stereotypes” in ordering the deportation of a Serbian man who had testified that he had been raped in the army, terrorized by police and beaten by armed vigilantes because he was gay. In his decision, Holliday opined that the man had “no effeminate traits” and thus discredited his claims, denying him protection in the United States.

The panel called Holliday’s rationale “offensive.” He declined to comment. In February, he was appointed to the Baton Rouge immigration court.

Some of the recruits were not shy about sharing their thoughts about divisive issues online before their hiring. Nathan M. Hansen, a Minnesota lawyer, was appointed this month, more than a year after he lost a race for district judge. He had shared social media posts about the “Haitian invasion of Ohio” and promoted right-wing conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, about a rumored child sex ring operating from a D.C. pizzeria, the Minnesota Reformer recently reported.

After Trump’s immigration raids triggered protests in Minneapolis, Hansen posted on Facebook, “Is there anything we can do to help ICE if we want to?” He did not respond to a request for comment.

Hansen is serving in the Twin Cities area.

Not everyone has made the cut.

Joe Bovino, a Florida immigration attorney, advanced far in the Trump administration’s process. He is the author of several books, including one that he advertises as a “field guide” to Latinas in the United States. The book includes sexually explicit descriptions of body types and an image of a zipper to rate women’s “promiscuity.”

Bovino was recently assigned to the Miami immigration court, records reviewed by The Post show. But when the Justice Department issued press releases announcing the new judges this month, his name wasn’t on the list.

In text messages with The Post, Bovino said he didn’t know why he was pulled. He said that it was “obvious” his books were meant to be humorous and emphasized that they were written “years ago.”

“I enjoyed it while it lasted,” he said of the training. “Lots of patriots and good people involved.”