Two immigration judges lost their jobs last Friday after they dismissed high-profile deportation cases filed by the Trump administration against two international students who had spoken out for Palestinian causes.
The terminations of Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, along with four other judges, came as the Trump administration pushed to clear cases faster and cut asylum approvals to record lows.
According to The New York Times report on Saturday, April 11, Patel oversaw the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts University studying children’s relationship to social media.
Federal agents arrested Ozturk in March 2025 while she walked near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts.
The State Department, under Secretary Marco Rubio, revoked her F-1 student visa, citing potential foreign policy concerns related to an op-ed she co-wrote for the Tufts Daily.
The foreign student criticized the university.
That piece criticized the university’s handling of protests over the Israel-Gaza war and called for divestment from Israel-linked investments.
Patel decided in late January 2026 that the Department of Homeland Security had not shown that Ozturk could be removed.
The judge ended the case because there was no proof that her actions violated immigration law beyond protected speech.
Ozturk’s lawyers from the ACLU and private firms said that she was being held because of what she wrote, not because she did anything wrong. A federal judge had already ordered her to be released from jail in Louisiana, where she had been for weeks.
Also Read: Mass Deportation Plan Looms as Senate Confirms Trump Pick for DHS
Separately, Nina Froes handled the proceedings against Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University and legal permanent resident.
After the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, Mahdawi helped plan pro-Palestinian protests on campus and helped start the university’s Palestinian Student Union.
Agents took him into custody in April 2025 while he was in Vermont for what he thought was a normal citizenship interview. The government wanted him gone for the same reasons related to foreign policy.
In mid-February 2026, Froes blocked the deportation and terminated removal proceedings. Court records showed the administration struggled to file proper paperwork or meet its burden of proof.
Mahdawi’s attorneys called the effort an attack on his First Amendment rights. He had spent two weeks in custody before a federal judge ordered his release on bail.
The firings hit on the same day for both judges and their colleagues. Immigration judges work under the Justice Department, not as independent Article III judges, so the attorney general can hire and fire them at will.
The Trump team has used that power aggressively since taking office in January 2025. More than 100 judges have been dismissed nationwide out of roughly 750 on the bench when the term began.
Also Read: Obama-Era Green Cards Revoked as Rubio Targets Family of Iran Hostage Crisis Figure
Some courts, like those in San Francisco and New York, lost a quarter or more of their judges.
Data compiled from court records shows the impact. Judges who were later fired had granted asylum in about 46 percent of cases during this administration.
Those who stayed on approved claims at roughly 15 percent, while newly hired judges, including some pulled from DHS prosecutor roles or military JAG backgrounds, granted asylum in only about 6 to 7 percent of decisions.
Overall asylum approval rates across the system have fallen to around 7 percent, the lowest since reliable tracking began in 2009.
Deportation cases after Trump’s return.
Deportation orders have risen since Trump’s return to White House, and the massive backlog that grew during the Biden years has begun to shrink. Cases now move more quickly, sometimes with judges pushed to hear more per day.
Judges have said there is pressure from within to deny claims and avoid delays, with threats of punishment for those seen as too lenient.
The Trump government has defended the changes by saying they will bring “integrity” back to a system they say had become de facto amnesty.
Immigration lawyers keeping an eye on the changes say the firings are making the other judges nervous.
One lawyer who worked for Ozturk said that procedural decisions like these used to be normal, but now they could hurt your career.
