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Washington Post investigation found DOJ hired immigration judges for ideological alignment, two-thirds lacking immigration-law experience

A Washington Post investigation published April 27, 2026, found that the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review has been hiring immigration judges chosen for alignment with the administration's mass-deportation agenda rather than legal qualification. Since January 2025 the DOJ has fired more than 100 immigration judges and appointed over 140 new ones, two-thirds of whom list no immigration-law experience and more than three-quarters of whom never worked at the DOJ, ICE, or the immigration courts. Recent hires include a men's-rights divorce attorney with no immigration background, an attorney who promoted debunked conspiracy theories, and a former judge whose past asylum ruling an appeals court found was distorted by anti-gay stereotyping.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
Washington, D.C.

Abuses documented

Actors

On April 27, 2026, a Washington Post investigation reported that the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has been filling the immigration-court bench with judges chosen for their support of the administration's mass-deportation agenda rather than for their legal qualifications. Since President Trump took office in January 2025, the DOJ has fired more than 100 sitting immigration judges and appointed more than 140 new ones. The Post's survey of the new hires found that two-thirds listed no immigration-law experience and that more than three-quarters had never worked for the Justice Department, ICE, or the immigration courts. The department has advertised the roles as "deportation judges," offering salaries as high as $207,500 and signing bonuses in some locations.

Among the recent appointments are Melissa Isaak, hired April 8, 2026, as a temporary judge to hear cases in Atlanta — a self-described "divorce attorney for men" and former January 6 defense attorney with no immigration background who has publicly disparaged women; Nathan Hansen, assigned to Minnesota cases, whose social-media accounts promoted "Pizzagate," Obama birtherism, and the racist claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets, and who in December 2025 publicly asked what he could do "to help ICE"; and Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge whose 2007 denial of a gay Serbian man's asylum claim was found by a federal appeals court in 2010 to be "so colored by impermissible stereotyping of homosexuals" that the ruling could not be meaningfully reviewed.

Immigration judges are Justice Department employees who decide whether people may remain in the United States, and their competence and impartiality are central to the fairness of removal proceedings. Alongside the hiring overhaul, the department's Board of Immigration Appeals has directed judges not to grant bond hearings, requiring detained people to remain in custody while they pursue their claims.

Why we recorded this

Due process in removal proceedings depends on neutral, competent adjudicators applying immigration law to the facts of each case. A Washington Post investigation documented the Justice Department firing more than 100 immigration judges and installing over 140 new ones selected for alignment with the administration's deportation agenda rather than legal qualification, most with no immigration-law experience and several with records of documented bias. This archive records when the government degrades the impartial adjudication that due process requires by staffing the immigration bench toward a predetermined outcome.

Sources

  1. Many DOJ 'deportation judges' lack experience and training — The Washington Post investigative accessed July 15, 2026
  2. One of Minnesota's most unhinged right-wing posters is the state's newest immigration judge — Minnesota Reformer investigative accessed July 15, 2026
  3. Trump Admin Hires 'Unhinged' Right-Winger As Immigration Judge — HuffPost secondary accessed July 15, 2026
  4. Trump Judge Says Some Women Are Just a 'Warm, Wet Hole' — The New Republic secondary accessed July 15, 2026

See also