Fired Immigration Judge Sues DOJ, Says She Was Terminated 48 Hours After Challenging ICE Over Detained Teen

Chloe Dillon spent three years as an immigration judge in San Francisco before she says a single email ended her career.

Dillon filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit on Thursday, September 10, accusing the Justice Department of firing her roughly 48 hours after she raised concerns about how ICE handled a teenage asylum seeker in her courtroom, according to court documents cited by The Independent and Radar Online.

What Happened

On August 20, 2025, a teenager appeared alone in Dillon's courtroom before ICE moved to dismiss his case and place him into expedited removal, according to the complaint. Dillon had previously given the individual, who was representing himself, time to find a lawyer rather than fast-tracking his deportation.

After the hearing, the teen was arrested by ICE. Dillon says she later concluded he was "almost certainly a designated unaccompanied minor" who had the right to have his asylum application decided by an asylum officer first, not shoved into expedited removal, the lawsuit states. That determination was Dillon's own assessment; no court or agency has independently confirmed the teen's status as an unaccompanied minor.

Dillon emailed her supervisor warning that ICE's conduct risked violating federal protections and was "disrupting the orderly administration of justice." Roughly 48 hours later, she says she received a termination notice signed by Acting Executive Office for Immigration Review Director Sirce Owen, citing "Article II of the Constitution" as the legal basis, according to Radar Online.

The lawsuit says the conflict didn't start there. Dillon claims a supervisor warned her back in spring 2025 that "the White House" was watching how she handled ICE's requests to change venue on cases and cautioned her against pushing back, per The Independent. She says she denied at least two ICE motions to reopen cases involving people classified as unaccompanied minors before the August incident.

"When you have judges who are in fear that they will be fired for the decisions that they're making, it has completely undermined the basic principles of judicial adjudication," Dillon told SFGate, as quoted by The Independent.

The DOJ Response

The Justice Department has described Dillon's allegations as "patently false," according to Ground News. The department has roughly 60 days to formally respond to the lawsuit in court. No judge has ruled on the merits of Dillon's claims.

Immigration judges are DOJ employees, not Article III judges with lifetime tenure, and the administration has framed personnel changes at EOIR as "restoring integrity" by replacing Biden-era appointees, per Ground News. Dillon is one of 14 immigration judges removed since President Trump returned to office in January 2025. The administration has not, in any source reviewed here, publicly laid out an incident-by-incident justification for each removal, and whether Dillon's firing was retaliatory or a routine personnel decision within the executive's discretion over EOIR remains a legal question the lawsuit is designed to test.

The suit names Attorney General Pam Bondi and EOIR, and seeks reinstatement, back pay, damages, and a declaration that the firing was unlawful, citing First and Fifth Amendment violations, according to The New Republic.

Related Disputes

Dillon's case sits alongside two other judicial disputes over immigration enforcement, though none of the three are legally connected.

Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court issued a public reprimand Thursday against District Court Judge Shelley Joseph, closing out a case that began in 2018 when she allowed a clerk to shut off courtroom recording during a sidebar before a defendant, Jose Medina-Perez, left through a rear exit while an ICE officer waited in the lobby, according to Fox News. The high court found Joseph never approved a plan to help Medina-Perez evade ICE and wasn't aware her clerk had arranged it, but ruled her conduct created an "appearance of impropriety."

In Wisconsin, former Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was convicted of felony obstruction for helping a migrant evade ICE agents and received a $5,000 fine but no jail time, despite federal prosecutors seeking 15 to 21 months, Fox News reported. Her attorney says she plans to appeal.

Those two cases involve judges disciplined or prosecuted for allegedly helping migrants avoid ICE. Dillon's case is the inverse: a judge who says she was punished for slowing ICE down without ever obstructing an arrest, simply by delaying a case and raising written objections through official channels.

Unresolved Questions

No court has yet weighed in on whether Dillon's termination was lawful, retaliatory, or a permissible exercise of executive authority over an at-will administrative judgeship. The DOJ's forthcoming response, due within roughly 60 days of the September 10 filing, will be the first indication of how the government intends to defend the firing in court. Whether the teenager Dillon tried to protect was in fact an unaccompanied minor entitled to asylum-officer review, rather than expedited removal, also has not been resolved by any tribunal.