Noah Feldman, Columnist

Firing Immigration Judges Threatens More Than Immigrants

December 7, 2025 at 1:00 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Immigration status isn’t the only thing at stake behind these walls.
Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America

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The Trump administration’s latest outrage is firing immigration judges and replacing them with military lawyers who lack experience in immigration law. The move combines two of President Donald Trump’s signature initiatives: It’s part of his war on immigrants and also part of his effort to make civil servants obey the administration’s policies — or be fired.

To make sense of what’s happening, let’s start with the curious legal status of immigration judges. They aren’t part of the federal judiciary established by Article III of the Constitution — such judges have life tenure, and even the Trump administration hasn’t claimed it can fire them.