Administration fires 2 immigration judges who ruled against deporting Palestinian rights advocates
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who earlier this year dismissed the deportation cases of students advocating for Palestinian rights, the union representing immigration judges confirmed Monday.
Roopal Patel, who was appointed as an immigration judge in 2024, ruled in February that there were no grounds to deport Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University. Ozturk was held in detention in Louisiana for 45 days.
Nina Froes, who was also appointed as a judge in 2024, dismissed deportation proceedings against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student who was arrested by immigration authorities immediately following his citizenship interview last April.
Froes and Patel are among 113 immigration judges who have been fired during the current Trump administration. According to the National Association of Immigration Judges, six judges were terminated this past weekend alone.
It’s unclear if the two judges were terminated directly because of their rulings in the deportation cases of the students.
News of the dismissals was first reported by The New York Times.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration court judges, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., said on social media that the firings “violated every basic due process.”
“Donald Trump is purging immigration judges who aren’t rubber stamps for his cruel, inhumane mass deportation agenda,” Goldman said. “In just over a year in office, he has fired more than 100 judges and threatened others who refused to comply with his wishes.”
In an aerial view Salvadorian armed forces stand guard outside CECOT (Counter Terrorism Confinement Center) where thousands of accused gang members are imprisoned on December 15, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. John Moore/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of the Venezuelan migrants who were were deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison last year in violation of a court order.
Boasberg on Thursday criticized the administration’s refusal to offer remedies for the deportees for what he called “flagrant” due-process violations.
“Our starting point is the Court’s prior finding that the deportees were denied due process,” Boasberg wrote. “Against this backdrop, and mindful of the flagrancy of the Government’s violations of the deportees’ due-process rights that landed Plaintiffs in this situation, the Court refuses to let them languish in the solution-less mire Defendants propose.”
The judge’s order requires the government to provide “boarding letters” and cover the financial cost of air travel for the Venezuelans currently in third countries who “so desire” to return to the U.S.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ICE Police and Immigration & Deportation (Douglas Rissing/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Homeland Security has now picked another state on which to focus its immigration enforcement action: Maine.
On Wednesday, DHS launched “Operation Catch of the Day” — an operation targeting criminal illegal migrants in the state, according to a DHS spokesperson.
Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin singled out Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, and “her fellow sanctuary politicians” for prompting the need for the federal immigration crackdown in Maine.
“We have launched Operation Catch of the Day to target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in the state. On the first day of operations, we arrested illegal aliens convicted of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and endangering the welfare of a child,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “Under President Trump and [DHS] Secretary [Kristi] Noem, we are no longer allowing criminal illegal aliens to terrorize American citizens.”
It was not immediately clear how long DHS plans to keep U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Maine or if the Customs and Border Protection agents currently operating in Minneapolis will move to Maine.
Mills, who has had previous run-ins with President Donald Trump over the past year, is running for the U.S. Senate.
In a statement released on Monday, Andrew Benson, the U.S. attorney for the District of Maine, said people have the right to protest, but not turn to violence, and seemed to indicate a DHS operation was coming.
“In the coming days, if Maine citizens seek to exercise their rights to assemble and protest, it is vital that these protests remain peaceful,” Benson said. “Anyone who forcibly assaults or impedes a federal law enforcement officer, willfully destroys government property, or unlawfully obstructs federal law enforcement activity commits a federal crime and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
There was no immediate comment from Mills on the ICE operation in Maine. But in a Jan. 14 video statement released on social media, Mills said she and members of her administration had unsuccessfully attempted to glean any information about the federal government’s enforcement plans in her state.
Mills said the state was taking proactive steps to prepare for the immigration crackdown.
“I have directed the Maine State Police to work closely with local law enforcement as necessary, to provide whatever support is needed in advance of and during any potential federal operations,” Mills said.
She said her administration had also been in contact with city officials in Portland and Lewiston, the largest cities in Maine, as well as the state attorney general, “to coordinate our response.”
“If any operations take place, our goal as always will be to protect the safety and the rights of the people of Maine,” Mills said. “Look, Maine knows what good law enforcement looks like because our law enforcement are held to high professional standards, they undergo substantial professional training, and they are accountable to the law. And I’ll tell you this, they don’t wear a mask to shield their identities, and they don’t arrest people in order to fill a quota.”
Mills said she fully supported the right for the people of her state to protest, as long as they do so peacefully.
She also directed a message to the federal government.
“If your plan is to come here to be provocative and to undermine the civil rights of Maine residents, do not be confused. Those tactics are not welcome here,” she said.
Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline slammed ICE in a statement on Wednesday, saying the agency’s “terror and intimidation tactics reflect a complete lack of humanity and concern for basic human welfare.”
“These masked men with no regard for the rule of law are causing long-term damage to our state and to our country,” Sheline said. “Lewiston stands for the dignity of all the people who call Maine home. We will never stop caring for our neighbors.”
In an aerial view, Nancy Guthrie’s residence is seen on February 17, 2026 in Tucson, Arizona. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Authorities said they’re looking into using genetic genealogy in the investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s mysterious abduction, and an expert says the cutting-edge technique could be the key.
While authorities may find Guthrie’s kidnapper through other avenues of investigation, “if they don’t, investigative genetic genealogy definitely will,” genetic genealogist CeCe Moore told ABC News.
Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, was kidnapped from her Tucson, Arizona, home in the early hours of Feb. 1 by an unknown suspect.
The FBI ran DNA from a glove found during a roadside search through the national criminal database known as CODIS, but did not get a match to any of the roughly 22 million samples in the database, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said.
That glove — which was found about 2 miles from Nancy Guthrie’s house — also did not match DNA found at her property, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Moore, a former ABC News contributor, said, “I think we have to exercise a lot of caution in putting too much emphasis on” the glove.
“If it had had Nancy’s DNA, or had matched the DNA at the crime scene, obviously that would be different. But with it being found at such a distance, I always was a little hesitant to get too hopeful about that,” she said. “I think the DNA found at the home is far more compelling.”
While the DNA found at Nancy Guthrie’s property is still being analyzed, the sheriff’s department said on Tuesday that investigators are “looking into additional investigative genetic genealogy options for DNA evidence to check for matches.”
Genetic genealogy takes the DNA of an unknown suspect left behind and identifies the suspect by tracing the family tree through his or her family members, who voluntarily submit their DNA to a genealogy database. Genetic genealogy has been used to solve hundreds of cases since it was first implemented in the 2018 arrest of the “Golden State Killer,” a cold case that had stumped California law enforcement for decades.
“Just like in the hundreds of cases where we’ve been able to identify a violent criminal that couldn’t be found any other way, genetic genealogy has the power to do so through reverse engineering this individual’s family tree based on his DNA alone,” Moore said. “When you have this person’s DNA, you have so much information about their family tree at your fingertips. And so you can piece that tree back together … you just have to spend the time to look at all that information and sort through it.”
“So genetic genealogy often steps in and is successful when all the other leads have been exhausted,” she said.
In the Guthrie case, investigators “were very smart to start [pursuing genetic genealogy] early, and not wait for all those other leads to be exhausted,” Moore said. “Because if he’s not identified any other way, investigative genetic genealogy will definitely be the key — it’s really just a matter of time.”
And when it comes to that timeframe, Moore said, there are two factors: “the population group from which the person of interest descends — and luck.”
“Sometimes you just get lucky and somebody has a close relative in these very small databases,” Moore said.
“If the population group is one that’s not well represented, then that can make it extremely difficult. If the person has deep roots in the United States and primarily Northwest European ancestry, they may be identified in a matter of minutes or hours, because that’s the population group that’s best represented, and it’s also the one that we have the most information about being here in the United States,” she said. “If someone’s born in another country, or even as far back as their great-grandparents were immigrants, there’s far less representation in the databases that we’re able to use, and it’s also more difficult to work with records outside of the U.S.”
In the Guthrie case, law enforcement sources told ABC News on Wednesday that the FBI has reached out to Mexican authorities. There’s no evidence Nancy Guthrie was taken to Mexico, but it’s an avenue investigators are exploring given Tucson’s proximity to the border, the sources said.
If the Guthrie suspect’s parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents were born in Mexico, Moore said, “it will likely take longer.”
Moore said she predicts the genetic genealogy process in the Guthrie case “won’t take more than weeks, maybe months.”
“I have worked on cases for years. However, I don’t think this case will take that long because of the large amount of resources being dedicated to it. I would suspect the FBI genetic genealogy team would be brought in if it takes too long, and they have 200 agents,” she said.
Moore also noted that investigative genetic genealogy can be slowed due to law enforcement’s limited access to DNA profiles.
“There are over 50 million people who have taken direct-to-consumer DNA tests, but most of them are in the three largest databases, and those companies have barred law enforcement from using their databases for these purposes,” Moore said. Currently, law enforcement is limited to accessing three smaller databases, which combined have about 2 million DNA profiles, she said.
“I do expect that if [the Guthrie suspect] is not identified soon, then law enforcement very likely will serve a warrant on those bigger databases” to try to request access, she said.
