Two immigration judges were fired on a Friday in April. Not because they had committed legal mistakes. Not due to wrongdoing. Not because their records had generated complaints, their courts had lagged, or anything that would typically be grounds for dismissal in a functioning legal system. On the same day, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes were fired along with four other colleagues, marking the Trump administration’s most recent attempt to restructure the nation’s immigration courts. The specific offense, if you will, was simple: they had examined deportation cases from the government, applied the law as they understood it, and decided against the government. They vanished a few weeks or months after those decisions.
It’s important to be specific about the actions of each of these judges. In January, Patel, a Boston immigration judge, decided that there was no reason to deport Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish PhD candidate at Tufts University whose student visa had been revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio for criticizing the administration’s position on Palestinian causes in an opinion piece published in her university’s student newspaper.
Judges Roopal Patel & Nina Froes — Firing, April 2026
| Judge Roopal Patel | Immigration judge, Boston — oversaw case of Rümeysa Öztürk (Tufts University) |
| Judge Nina Froes | Immigration judge — oversaw the case of Mohsen Mahdawi (Columbia University) |
| Appointed by | Biden administration, 2024 — terminated before the end of the 2-year probationary period |
| Termination date | Friday, April 10, 2026 — alongside four other colleagues |
| Rümeysa Öztürk case | Turkish PhD student at Tufts; visa revoked after op-ed in student newspaper; Patel ruled no grounds for deportation (Jan. 2026) |
| Mohsen Mahdawi case | Palestinian Columbia student & green card holder; Froes dismissed case (Feb. 2026), ruling govt evidence was inadmissible |
| Broader context | ~100 immigration judges fired by the Trump admin since 2025; asylum approvals below 10% — lowest rate on record |
| Legal structure note | Immigration judges work for the DOJ — hired and fired by the attorney general, not protected by judicial independence |
| Reference | The New York Times — Judges fired after blocking deportations ↗ |
In the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University who holds a green card, Froes came to a similar conclusion. In February, he ruled that the evidence the Trump administration had provided to support his removal was not admissible in court. Legal reasoning served as the foundation for both decisions. At the very least, neither judge was making any political statements other than the customary political act of applying the law to the facts before them.
Understanding the structure that allowed for these firings is crucial because it’s what sets this scenario apart from what most people imagine when they consider a judge being removed from the bench. Immigration judges are employed by the Justice Department and are appointed and dismissed by the attorney general, in contrast to federal judges in the independent judicial branch. In contrast to Article III judges, they lack tenure protection, a Senate confirmation procedure, and any other safeguards against executive pressure. They work within the executive branch, deciding cases that the branch brings, and they are appointed at its discretion. Although there has always been some tension in that design, it has rarely been used as directly as it is now.
Both Patel and Froes were nearing the conclusion of their initial two-year probationary terms prior to their terminations, having been appointed by the Biden administration in 2024. They fit a profile that has become common in this wave of judicial dismissals, according to the New York Times: they were appointed by a Democrat and had previously represented immigrants in court. Since taking office again in 2025, the Trump administration has now dismissed about 100 immigration judges. That isn’t an elimination of bad actors. That is a methodical reorganization of the judges in immigration cases and, consequently, the decisions made in those cases.
On their own, the numbers tell a tale. While granting asylum at the lowest rate since at least 2009, judges are ordering a record number of people to be deported. Cases are proceeding more quickly. The backlog that developed during the Biden administration has begun to decrease. This appears to be efficient on one reading. It appears to be a system being tuned to produce a predetermined result, with anyone who generates the incorrect result being eliminated from the equation, according to another interpretation, and it’s difficult not to lean toward the second. Engineering results and backlog clearing are two different things. It is much more difficult to overlook that distinction now that Patel and Froes have been fired.
The larger cases that elevated these judges to prominence are significant in and of themselves. Due to their involvement in pro-Palestinian activities on American campuses, which the Trump administration deemed antisemitic, Öztürk and Mahdawi were part of a group of foreign students detained by ICE. The government consistently maintained that its continued presence could be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy.
With some success in lower courts, civil liberties attorneys contended that the arrests were intended to stifle free speech and that the deportation and revocation of visas were not reactions to actual legal infractions but rather punishment for opinions the administration deemed objectionable. The exact outcome of these cases is still unknown, especially after the US Board of Immigration Appeals denied Mahmoud Khalil’s request to have his own deportation case dismissed, ruling that it could proceed in immigration court but refusing to comment on whether deportation was warranted.
There is a cumulative weight to this that can be obscured by individual developments when you watch it happen piece by piece, including the arrests, visa revocations, firings, and record deportation orders. Every incident has a unique set of facts, legal framework, and opposing viewpoints. However, there isn’t much of a pattern linking them. Judges who refuse are dismissed. The remaining judges operate in a system where the repercussions of turning someone down are now clearly visible. The question of whether that qualifies as pressure and the implications for the future independence of immigration adjudication are unlikely to be settled amicably.
