The Trump administration has hired dozens of new immigration judges with no immigration law experience, including some with openly pro-MAGA views, in a bid to fast-track deportations.
In an unprecedented purge, the Department of Justice has fired more than 100 immigration judges since President Donald Trump took office last year, and has hired more than 140 new judges to replace them.
Two-thirds of the new judges have no prior immigration law experience listed in their biographies, according to an analysis from The Washington Post.
Just 24 percent had worked for the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or immigration courts.
In past years, most new recruits had backgrounds in immigration law, and yet they still received more extensive training than is currently provided, according to the Post.
The DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review now appears to be hiring new judges based on their willingness to deny asylum, rush through cases, and help the administration meet its goal of deporting a million immigrants, sources told the paper.
Prospective candidates are invited to apply for roles as “deportation judges” helping to “write the next chapter of America.”
They can earn up to $207,500 a year, plus 25 percent signing bonuses in some Democrat-led states, and are even given the option to work remotely and choose flexible hours that allow them to keep their day jobs.
The new cohort of judges includes Melissa Isaak, a defense attorney who represented three rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, the Post reported.
Isaak, who later withdrew from two of the cases, also represented Alabama Republican Roy Moore, who was accused of sexually assaulting underage women, in a defamation case over the allegations, which Moore denies.
In 2021, Isaak gave a speech at an anti-feminist convention saying there were two types of women: a “real woman” who supports her husband, and a “warm wet hole” who is promiscuous.
She also claimed that women and children falsely accuse men of domestic abuse at high rates in family court, and that more men suffer from domestic abuse than women. In fact, FBI data shows that most domestic violence victims are women.
The issue is likely to come up in immigration court because victims often cite domestic violence as grounds for seeking asylum. Isaak did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
Another newly hired “deportation judge,” Carey Holliday, is a former Republican Party state official who also served as an immigration judge from 2006 to 2009, the Post reported.
He stepped down after it was revealed the Bush administration had been hiring immigration judges based on their political leanings, which is against federal law.
In 2010, a federal appeals court criticized Holliday for “relying impermissibly on stereotypes” when he denied asylum to a gay Serbian man who testified he was raped by the army, terrorized by police, and beaten by armed vigilantes because of his sexuality.
Holliday wrote that the man’s claims were discredited by the fact that he had “no effeminate traits.”
Reached by the Post, he declined to comment.
A third judge, Nathan M. Hansen, shared social media posts about the “Haitian invasion of Ohio,” promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory claiming a Washington, D.C., pizzeria was operating a child sex ring, and voiced his support for ICE’s violent raids in Minnesota.
Hansen did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
The Daily Beast has also reached out to the Executive Office for Immigration Review for comment.
Unlike regular federal judges, immigration judges are federal attorneys supervised by the attorney general. They can be fired under certain circumstances, but many of the judges fired in the past year have challenged their dismissals in court.
