The Justice Department is offering financial incentives to fill immigration bench vacancies in Massachusetts following the termination of more than a dozen immigration judges, raising alarm among legal experts who say the rebranded title and recruitment campaign signal a broader transformation of immigration courts into enforcement arms.
The U.S. Department of Justice is recruiting “deportation judges” for posts in Boston and Chelmsford, offering a 25 percent salary incentive to first-time federal employees willing to take new seats on Massachusetts’s immigration bench. The recruitment campaign, posted publicly on the Justice Department’s hiring portal at join.justice.gov, was first reported by MassLive on Thursday, May 21, 2026.
The recruitment listings come on the heels of a wave of terminations that has removed more than a dozen Massachusetts immigration judges since President Trump returned to office in January 2025, and over 100 immigration judges nationwide before the end of their two-year probationary period, as reported by WBUR and cited in MassLive’s coverage.
For former judges who lived through those firings — many of whom were locked out of their computers and escorted from courthouses, according to their accounts — the rebrand from “immigration judge” to “deportation judge” is more than semantic. They describe it as the visible piece of a structural transformation underway across the country’s immigration court system, one that they say prioritizes rapid removal over the careful weighing of evidence that defined the bench until recently.
The Recruitment Page
The Justice Department’s hiring page features the image of Lady Justice against a navy-blue background and invites applicants to “be the judge,” according to screenshots captured by MassLive and confirmed at the join.justice.gov portal.
The salary range for the positions is $159,951 to $207,500, with remote positions available alongside in-person positions.
The 25 percent salary incentive is being offered in regions the administration has identified as enforcement priorities — including Massachusetts, New York, and California, three states that contain so-called “sanctuary city” jurisdictions.
Boston and Chelmsford in Massachusetts; New York City; Los Angeles, San Francisco, and three other California cities are all eligible for the bonus, according to the MassLive report and the Justice Department’s hiring page.
Each of these regions has already seen significant judicial turnover in the past year — turnover that, according to former judges and their lawyers, did not come at the judges’ own initiative.
A Termination Wave That Reshaped the Bench
Among those terminated was George Pappas, 68, who served as an immigration judge in both Boston and Chelmsford before being removed from the bench. Last week, Pappas filed a federal lawsuit seeking reinstatement, MassLive reported. The suit alleges that the Justice Department discriminated against him on the basis of his prior work defending immigrants, his age, and his Greek national origin.
According to the lawsuit summary as reported by MassLive, Pappas argues that he exceeded all performance standards during his time on the bench and never received negative feedback prior to his removal.
He was one of more than 20 judges in his hiring class who were not converted to permanent positions, his suit contends.
According to his attorney, Kevin Owen, who spoke to MassLive, the group reportedly included every judge in the class whose surname was Hispanic, Middle Eastern, or Indian.
According to Owen, the pattern suggests that the Justice Department is profiling judges based on their backgrounds to reshape the bench in line with the administration’s enforcement priorities.
The Justice Department has not publicly responded in detail to the allegations.
Among the former judges raising public concerns about the recruitment campaign is Jeremiah Johnson, a former California immigration judge who was dismissed more than six months ago, according to ABC7 Bay Area, as cited in MassLive’s reporting, approximately 30 minutes after he granted asylum to a family from Guatemala.
Johnson appeared at a national press conference on Thursday alongside other judges who had been terminated. Speaking about the Justice Department’s recruitment ad, he told reporters that judges initially believed the listing was fraudulent. “We thought it was a fake,” he said, as reported by MassLive, distinguishing the role of an immigration judge — which involves weighing evidence — from the implication that case outcomes are predetermined.
Johnson also warned, per the MassLive coverage, that because the recruitment campaign’s “deportation judge” imagery was associated with the Department of Homeland Security — a party in immigration cases — the messaging “tinges the process” and blurs the line between an independent court and an enforcement agency.
Why This Matters to the Haitian Community
The Boston immigration court, located inside the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in downtown Boston, is one of the central venues where Haitian immigration cases in Massachusetts are adjudicated. For the estimated 45,000-plus Haitian Temporary Protected Status holders in the Commonwealth, along with asylum seekers, family-based petitioners, and those facing removal proceedings, the composition and orientation of the immigration bench is not a distant policy matter — it is the courtroom where their cases are decided.
The Trump administration moved in 2025 to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haiti, leaving an estimated 350,000 to 564,000 Haitian nationals nationwide facing the loss of legal protections. While the legal status of those terminations continues to be contested — most recently through Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s successful April 2026 House discharge petition extending Haitian TPS through 2029, which now faces uncertain prospects in the Senate — many Haitian families in the meantime are navigating ongoing immigration proceedings before judges whose jobs may not be secure, and whose successors are being recruited under a title that, according to former judges, signals predetermined outcomes.
Enforcement Reaching Into the Courts
The transformation is not limited to the bench itself.
Boston immigration attorney Todd Pomerleau told MassLive that the way immigration cases now move through the system has changed substantially.
Pomerleau described to MassLive a process in which, historically, immigration matters in Massachusetts followed a predictable pattern. His clients went to the Boston immigration court, appealed if they lost, checked in with ICE, and proceeded through the process locally.
Now, Pomerleau said, clients are being picked up at multiple points — ICE check-ins, green card interviews, biometrics appointments — and then transferred to detention facilities in Texas, Louisiana, Vermont, and other distant locations. In some cases, he told MassLive, the detained individuals do not appear in the online ICE detainee locator, and their attorneys are not notified.
According to Pomerleau’s account to MassLive, the enforcement footprint has expanded into state courthouses as well. He described a rape victim arrested in a courthouse hallway after testifying, and human trafficking victims detained at fingerprint appointments — circumstances that, he noted to the outlet, federal law has historically been intended to prevent in order to avoid retraumatizing crime victims.
MassLive reports that it has documented numerous public arrests during court proceedings in Boston, Chelsea, Lowell, and Worcester over the past six months.
In response, Pomerleau has founded Mass Deportation Defense (MaDD), a Boston-based nonprofit that operates a grant-funded clinic for individuals who cannot afford legal representation, mentors attorneys nationwide in emergency habeas corpus filings, and brings lawsuits over unlawful detention. The organization, according to MassLive, also operates a media arm to amplify the cases of detained individuals.
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This article was originally written in English. Versions in other languages — including French and Haitian Creole — are made available through AI translation software. Errors and inaccuracies may be present in translated versions. Only the English version should be considered the authoritative record.
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