Judges Who Dismissed Student Deportation Cases Removed

The Trump administration on Friday removed two immigration judges who dismissed deportation cases against two high-profile pro-Palestinian international students, The New York Times reported.

The judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, were among six that the Justice Department—which oversees immigration adjudication—dismissed last week, part of the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on immigrants.

Patel, an immigration judge in Boston, ruled in January that the government had no grounds to deport Rümeysa Öztürk, an international Ph.D. student from Turkey studying at Tufts University, who was picked up by plainclothes immigration officers on the streets around Tufts last year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had revoked her student visa status after she co-wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper criticizing Tufts’ response to the campus pro-Palestinian movement.

Froes, an immigration judge in Chelmsford, Mass., in February blocked the deportation of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student—and green card holder—at Columbia University and a leader of the campus protests during the Israel-Gaza war. Froes determined that the Department of Homeland Security had not proved its case that Mahdawi—who had been freed from federal custody last April—could be legally deported from the U.S.

Öztürk and Mahdawi were two of the most vocal and visible international students detained in the wake of the pro-Palestinian campus protests of 2024. Their arrests prompted widespread outrage among free speech advocates.

Both Patel and Froes were appointed during the Biden administration. And according to a New York Times analysis, both granted asylum more frequently than other judges: Patel in 41.5 percent of cases and Froes in 33 percent of cases, compared to 18 percent over all.

Froes told the Times she was not surprised by her dismissal.

“I fully expected it,” she said, given how many other judges the Trump administration has fired.

She also said she didn’t realize how renowned Mahdawi’s case was.

“You have so many people coming before you,” she said. “You don’t go google people’s names. That’s not how it works. You look at the record.”