Immigration judges removed after student rulings
The administration dismissed two immigration judges who had blocked deportations of pro‑Palestinian student activists, and one of the removed judges was Boston‑based. ( )
The Trump administration fired two immigration judges after they threw out deportation cases against student activists who supported Palestinian rights. (abcnews.com) The judges were Roopal Patel in Boston and Nina Froes in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Both were appointed in 2024, and both were dismissed on Friday, April 10, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges and local reports published April 13. (abcnews.com, wbur.org) Patel ruled in February that the government had not shown legal grounds to deport Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student. Öztürk had been detained in Louisiana for 45 days after immigration agents arrested her in Somerville, Massachusetts. (wbur.org, tuftsdaily.com) Froes dismissed the deportation case against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student and Vermont resident, on February 13. Mahdawi had been arrested by immigration authorities after a citizenship interview, and his lawyers said the government was trying to remove him over his speech and campus activism. (abcnews.com, vermontpublic.org) Immigration judges are not Article Three federal judges with life tenure. They work inside the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, and the attorney general appoints them to preside over removal cases. (justice.gov, justice.gov) That structure has made the court system a pressure point in the administration’s deportation push. The judges’ union said six immigration judges were fired over the weekend, three more were let go on April 3, and 113 judges have been dismissed since January 2025. (usnews.com, abcnews.com) The union said the firings came “without due process, cause or explanation.” Patel told WBUR she believed the administration was trying to install judges more willing to carry out its deportation agenda. (usnews.com, wbur.org) The Justice Department and the Executive Office for Immigration Review did not explain the two dismissals in the reports published Monday. ABC News said it was not clear whether Patel and Froes were fired directly because of those rulings. (abcnews.com) Patel and Froes were still in a two-year probationary period, a status that gives the department wider latitude to remove them before conversion to permanent roles. In recent years, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office said, about 94 percent of probationary immigration judges had been converted to permanent positions. (vermontpublic.org, warren.senate.gov) For now, the two student cases remain examples of judges rejecting deportation records they found legally insufficient. The firings leave those rulings intact, but they also show how directly the administration can reshape the bench that hears immigration cases. (abcnews.com, justice.gov)
