Some Americans feel targeted by President Trump’s immigration policies
A Chicago childcare worker reflects on a year of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
The Trump administration is firing more immigration judges, including two who dismissed high-profile deportation cases against pro-Palestinian student activists earlier this year, according to the union representing immigration judges.
The National Association of Immigration Judges confirmed on Monday, April 13, that six immigration judges were fired over the weekend, and three were fired on April 3. The layoffs were first reported by the New York Times last week.
The union said the dismissals also included Massachusetts judges Roopal Patel and Nina Froese, who were appointed during the Biden administration. Patel and Froese had thwarted the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Rumeisa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, and Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank.
“The recent firings mean that 113 immigration judges have been fired without due process, reason or explanation since January of last year,” the National Immigration Judges Association said, according to Reuters.
The union called the firings “wrong and unjust,” noting that it is highly unusual for an immigration judge to be fired before President Donald Trump returns to the White House. In July 2025, USA TODAY reported that the Justice Department had fired 17 immigration judges from federal courts in 10 states amid the Trump administration’s deportation push.
Immigration courts have come under increasing scrutiny as immigrants who wish to attend regular hearings are being restrained from entering and exiting the courts by masked officials. Courthouses and other federal buildings have become centers of protests across the United States, including in Los Angeles and New York.
Deportation case against Rumeisa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi dismissed
Ozturk, a child development researcher, was arrested in March 2025 after the State Department canceled his student visa. Her arrest was made public by a video that showed masked, plainclothes immigration officers detaining Ozturk as she walked on a sidewalk near her Boston-area home.
The incident comes as the Trump administration seeks to deport pro-Palestinian campus activists. Ozturk was arrested after co-authoring an opinion piece criticizing Tufts University’s response to students’ calls to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to “recognize the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
She was released in May 2025 after spending more than six weeks in a Louisiana immigration detention center. In February, Patel ruled there was no reason to deport Ozturk.
“I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that despite the flaws in the justice system, my case may offer hope to others who have also been wronged by the United States government,” Ozturk said in a statement at the time.
In April 2025, Mahdawi was arrested after participating in a pro-Palestinian protest. Federal authorities detained him when he arrived for his naturalization interview. He was then detained at a correctional facility in Vermont.
After two weeks in custody, a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release. Froese blocked his deportation in February, saying the Department of Homeland Security had failed in its obligation to prove he could be deported.
“This decision is an important step to protect what terror sought to destroy: the right to speak for peace and justice,” Mahdawi said in a statement at the time.
President Trump targets college campuses in response to pro-Palestinian protests
The Trump administration has come under intense scrutiny over its immigration policies. Some lawmakers and civil rights groups have condemned the controversial crackdown, alleging human rights violations and disregard for due process.
In 2024, pro-Palestinian protests erupted on university campuses across the country as demonstrators demanded that university endowments be stripped of Israeli benefits and that the federal government end military aid to Israel. The protests began in October 2023 after the start of the Israel-Hamas war and subsequent US-backed Israeli attack on Gaza.
When President Trump began his second term in 2025, he cracked down on pro-Palestinian activities, including attempting to deport international students and threatening to freeze funding to universities where protests took place. The crackdown faces judicial hurdles.
President Trump and his allies have accused university administrators of allowing anti-Semitism to flourish on campus, alleging that some pro-Palestinian campus protesters have physically attacked and harassed Jewish students and community members. Protesters say the president mistakenly conflated criticism of Israel’s attack on Gaza with anti-Semitism, and advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism.
Contributors: Eduardo Cuevas, Trevor HughesMr. Miss, and John Bacon, USA TODAY. Reuters
