Trump Administration Replacing Immigration Judges With Right-Wingers | EUROtoday

The Trump administration has employed a males’s rights advocate, a promoter of conspiracy theories who has expressed hostility to immigrants, and a former immigration choose, who beforehand questioned whether or not an asylum applicant was truly persecuted as a result of he didn’t seem like “overtly gay,” to function immigration judges.

The hires, first reported by The Washington Post on Mondayare a part of the Trump administration’s marketing campaign to fill immigration courts with judges who’re supportive of the federal government’s mass deportation agenda. Since President Donald Trump took workplace final 12 months, the Department of Justice has fired greater than 100 immigration judges and appointed greater than 140 new judges.

The Post surveyed the newly employed immigration judges and located that two-thirds listed no immigration regulation expertise of their on-line biographies and that greater than three-quarters had by no means labored for the Justice Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or immigration courts.

Melissa Isaak, who was just lately appointed as a short lived immigration choose to listen to instances in Atlanta, based a regulation agency “to fight exclusively for the rights of men in family law,” in keeping with her agency’s web site, www.protectingmen.com. Isaak has repeatedly claimed there are two forms of ladies: those that don’t have anything to supply aside from being a “warm wet hole,” and “real women” who allow their husbands to achieve success. She has falsely claimed that males usually tend to be victims of home violence than ladies, and that allegations of home violence by males in opposition to ladies and kids are “one of the most abused allegations in family court.” Immigration judges usually take into account instances involving home abuse allegations as proof of a person’s worry of deportation.

In addition to her household regulation work, Isaak labored as a protection lawyer for folks accused of collaborating within the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol after Trump’s electoral loss. She additionally represented Roy Moore, an Alabama Republican whose Senate marketing campaign failed after a number of ladies accused him of participating in sexual misconduct once they have been teenagers.

In the identical press launch asserting the hiring of Isaak, DOJ mentioned it had employed Nathan Hansen, an lawyer described by the Minnesota Reformer as one of many state’s “most unhinged right-wing posters.”

Hansen’s X accountwhich is at present set in order that solely accepted followers can view his posts, is crammed with posts endorsing extensively debunked conspiracies, in keeping with the Reformer. He has shared posts about “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy idea about Democratic politicians working a baby intercourse ring from the basement of a D.C. pizza restaurant; Obama birtherism, which falsely claimed President Barack Obama was not born within the U.S. and was subsequently ineligible to be president; and the Haitian Invasion of Ohio, a racist conspiracy idea pushed by Trump accusing Haitian immigrants in Ohio of consuming folks’s pets.

Hansen was appointed to supervise instances in Minnesota, the place federal immigration brokers fatally shot two U.S. residents throughout an enforcement surge earlier this 12 months. In December, forward of these killings, Hansen commented on Facebook, “Is there anything we can do to help ICE if we want to?”

Another considered one of DOJ’s current hires, Carey Holliday, is a former immigration choose who stepped down after a DOJ inspector common report discovered that the Bush administration had violated federal regulation by hiring immigration judges based mostly on their political leanings. Although the report didn’t identify Holliday, a former Republican Party state treasurer, the outline of one of many immigration judges talked about matches Holliday’s employment historical past, because the Post famous.

During his time as an immigration choose in Miami between 2006 and 2009, Holliday oversaw an asylum case involving a homosexual Serbian man named Mladen Todorovic who mentioned he confronted persecution in Serbia due to his sexual orientation. Todorovic was denied asylum for varied technical causes, Mother Jones reported on the time. But throughout his removing listening to, Holliday described Todorovic’s persecution claims as “highly suspect” as a result of, in his estimation, he didn’t look homosexual.

“The Court studied the demeanor of this individual very carefully throughout his testimony in Court today, and this gentleman does not appear to be overtly gay,” Holliday mentioned in the course of the listening to, noting, “he bears no effeminate traits or any other trait that would mark him as a homosexual.”

A federal appeals courtroom discovered in 2010 that Holliday’s resolution “was so colored by impermissible stereotyping of homosexuals” that it couldn’t conduct a significant evaluation of the choice. It ordered immigration authorities to conduct a brand new listening to “free of any impermissible stereotyping or ungrounded assumptions about how gay men are supposed to look or act.”

In a separate case from Holliday’s first stint as an immigration choose, he denied a request by a Bolivian household to listen to their declare that they have been unfairly focused for deportation as a result of their daughter campaigned for a invoice that may have protected folks delivered to the U.S. as youngsters from removing. In his denial, Mother Jones reported on the time, Holliday wrote that the daughter “freely chose to draw unwanted attention to herself and her family,” and that “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

Isaak, Hansen and Holliday didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

The Department of Justice is recruiting folks to be “deportation judges” with salaries as excessive as $207,500 and 25% signing bonuses in some areas.

As the Trump administration is overhauling the immigration courtroom bench, additionally it is implementing insurance policies that make it tougher for folks to win in immigration courtroom. DOJ’s Board of Immigration Appeals has directed judges to not grant bond hearings, forcing folks to endure harmful detention circumstances with the intention to pursue immigration claims. Last 12 months, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the DOJ company that oversees immigration courts, issued a memo directing judges to dismiss asylum instances with even minor technical errors with out a listening to. Asylum rejections doubled from 2024 to 2025, the Post discovered.