Dec 2 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday fired at least seven immigration judges in New York City, according to a spokesperson for the National Association of Immigration Judges and a review of a U.S. Department of Justice staff directory.
Those immigration judges worked at 26 Federal Plaza, which also houses the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s field office and has become an epicenter for arrests of migrants and protests over Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.
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More than 100 immigration judges out of about 700 have been fired or pushed out since Trump’s return to office in January, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a move that the organization says has depleted the number of judges available to handle a surge in cases as the administration ramps up arrests and deportations.
Immigration judges are not part of the federal judiciary but instead work as part of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. The Trump administration has taken the position that the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi have the constitutional right to remove immigration judges as inferior officers.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment on personnel matters.
Last month, the administration fired five immigration judges in San Francisco, as well as one judge in New York City and another in Boston, the association’s spokesperson said. On Monday, a former immigration judge in Ohio who was fired in February sued, arguing she was wrongly terminated because of her sex, national origin and political affiliation.
The fired judges in New York include Amiena Khan, the assistant chief immigration judge, who during Trump’s first term had spoken out against the Justice Department’s efforts to dissolve the National Association of Immigration Judges union, according to the organization’s spokesperson. She rose to become the group’s leader in 2021 during former Democratic President Joe Biden’s tenure.
Khan’s name by Tuesday morning had been removed from the New York immigration court’s online staff directory, as had the names of six other female immigration judges. Five of them had been appointed as judges during Democratic presidencies, while two were appointed by Trump’s first term attorney general, William Barr.
The terminations leave 25 permanent immigration judges in New York, according to a staff directory. Khan could not be reached for comment.
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Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston
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