Matthew O'Brien started his tenure as a judge in a Virginia immigration court at the end of the first Trump administration.
He was dismissed at the end of his two-year probationary period under the Biden administration. His dismissal — and that of several other judges whom President Trump brought in in his first term in office — sparked immediate GOP outrage and claims of political interference.
The Trump administration has now brought O'Brien back — and with a promotion to an assistant chief immigration judge.
The move has not been publicly announced. But it can be seen on the website of the Department of Justice, which oversees the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) that encompasses the immigration court system.
O'Brien has a history of public views that represent hardline stances on immigration. As a judge, he also had a record of denying asylum to the vast majority of people appearing before his court.
His rehiring raises questions about the neutrality of immigration judges, who are supposed to be impartial and whose decisions determine if someone can stay or must leave the country.
"When you're facing the immigration judge, you should have some confidence that person is trying to apply the law in an even-handed way, and that person is looking at your individual case rather than thinking about some kind of political project," said David Hausman, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
NPR was unable to reach O'Brien for a comment about his rehiring as a judge and his court record.
Kathryn Mattingly, the press secretary for EOIR, declined to comment on the political motivations of bringing back O'Brien, and instead pointed to his bio for his qualifications. She also said all judges must decide matters impartially, based on the law and cases before them.
Accusations of immigration "weaponization"
Immigration judges are traditionally not politically appointed, and come from two main tracks The first includes people who worked for the Department of Homeland Security, prosecuting the cases of those the U.S. wants to see removed from the country.
The second track includes those who were lawyers representing immigrants. However, it is not required that someone practice immigration law to be considered for the role.
Before becoming a judge, O'Brien had worked in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. He then got a job at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a think tank that calls for lower levels of migration and stricter border policies.
Like other civil servants, immigration judges can't be fired because of their politics.
But after the Biden administration dismissed him in 2022, O'Brien argued the decision was politically motivated and described it as a "weaponization" of immigration.
Republicans in Congress in 2022 also questioned whether his dismissal and that of other judges violated law and were a coordinated effort between the Biden administration and immigration advocates in order to get friendlier decisions for immigrants seeking to stay in the U.S.
The DOJ's inspector general later looked into the issue. It concluded there was not sufficient evidence to warrant a full investigation into whether Biden's Justice Department had engaged in systemic favoring or disfavoring of immigration judge candidates.
New memo questions Biden firings
But since Trump returned to the White House, the Justice Department in a February memo noted it cannot be confident the Biden administration was ethical and lawful in how it dismissed immigration judges and other adjudicators.
Immigration lawyers and other Trump critics see that memo as laying the groundwork to bring back O'Brien and others the Trump administration believes were unfairly fired, while removing those hired under Biden.
"The message seems to me, if you don't tow the party line, you may find yourself either out of government or at least sent to a less desirable assignment," said Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration judge who worked in the immigration court system for over two decades, under presidents of both parties.
Since coming back to the White House, Trump has moved to fire federal employees who worked on federal investigations into him, executed broad firings across agencies and took steps to make it easier to fire other federal employees. He also dismissed other immigration judges and immigration court personnel across the country, including in courts with open vacancies.
"If an administration is able to change personnel really quickly, if it's able to bypass career people in decision-making, then it can have a huge impact on the number of people being deported and the kind of process that those people receive first," Hausman, from UC Berkeley, said.
Mattingly, the press secretary for EOIR, said the DOJ's February memo was meant to re-establish "consistent and lawful practices" regarding adjudicator personnel matters, and said all judges must consider the law impartially and based on due process.
Andrew Arthur is another former immigration judge, former Republican Hill staffer, and now a resident fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of legal migration.
He also said he didn't view O'Brien's rehiring as politically motivated, since it could be possible compensation for his unfair firing under Biden. And he argued that all administrations have sought to bring in new judges who align with a new attorney general's policies.
Efforts to reshape immigration courts
It's not immediately clear if other judges dismissed under President Joe Biden have also been brought back.
But the Trump administration has taken a number of other steps to transform immigration court practice to more quickly remove people from the U.S. and reduce the backlog of the millions of cases awaiting decisions in the courts.
Trump himself has complained about the slow pace of proceedings in immigration court, saying on social media: "We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years."
The administration has sought to speed up the pace of asylum cases going through the immigration courts, and even bypass them altogether by enacting wartime powers and expanding expedited removals. It also placed "self-deportation" advertisements in court waiting rooms.
O'Brien's return to EOIR signals a potential additional approach: bringing like-minded civil servants back to the benches that decide the fates of both immigrants — and judges.
In his new role, O'Brien will be responsible for overseeing the judges at the Annandale court in Virginia as an assistant chief immigration judge.
Such a position is also responsible for managing labor relations at the court, writing probationary and training requirements — and eventually advising the DOJ on whether any new immigration judges get kept beyond their probationary periods.
"It sends a clear message that big brother is watching," Schmidt, the retired immigration judge, said about O'Brien's position.
Past statements on immigration
O'Brien has a history of public views that mirror the Trump administration's more hardline immigration stances.
During his two years as an immigration judge, he had an almost 90% rate of denying asylum to people coming to his court, most of whom came from El Salvador, according to statistics from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit immigration data tracker.
That's higher than both the national average denial rate and denial rate for his specific court, which were about 58% and 55% respectively.
"Who you get assigned to randomly in immigration court can really determine what happens in your case," said Hausman, the law professor.
Judges have wide discretion to decide cases, and some have clear patterns of decisions; for example, some may grant asylum nearly every time, while others may deny it nearly every time. The varied decisions can depend on many factors, including the judge's career background, the immigrant population near their court, and whether a potential immigrant has a lawyer (most immigrants do not.)
After leaving the bench, O'Brien went to work as director of investigations at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a legal organization that defends stricter border policies.
In that role, he testified before various committees in Congress on issues related to approaches to immigration policy and the merits of birthright citizenship.
"The diesel fuel being poured incessantly on this dumpster fire is a never-ending stream of bogus asylum claims that are, on their face, utterly meritless," O'Brien said in a statement to the House Oversight Committee. He said most asylum requests exaggerate conditions in South and Central America in order to gain status in the U.S.
Mattingly, the EOIR spokeswoman, defended O'Brien's qualifications and said all judges must follow the law.
"Immigration judges adjudicate all matters before them, including asylum cases, on a case-by-case basis, according to U.S. immigration law, regulations and precedent decisions," Mattingly said in response to criticism of O'Brien's past comments.
Questions about immigration court as "neutral arbiter"
O'Brien's past statements about asylum became a central issue during a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals argument last year about whether an asylum case should be appealed.
The DOJ argued O'Brien's comments, including that "99% of [asylum] claims were baseless," was not evidence of bias in the immigration courtroom and was simply a hyperbole.
The judges on the panel were skeptical — but ultimately did not rule on those claims.
Immigration advocates now say the Trump administration's hiring and firing decisions could threaten the crucial neutrality of the administrative courts.
"They're no longer a neutral arbiter," said Jennifer Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for low-income immigrants and their families. She fears immigration courts are poised to become a "deportation factory."
"Then they might as well be in the same component as the enforcement or removal operations," she said.
Copyright 2025 NPR
