A former federal immigration judge in Concord, California, is suing the Trump administration, claiming she was ousted from her position because she’s an older female Democrat with a history of advocating for immigrants.

Kyra Lilien’s lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice claims the agency terminated her in July amid a wave of removals targeting women and proponents of immigrants’ rights. All six female immigration judges in the Concord Immigration Court near San Francisco were removed around the same time, Lilien’s lawsuit alleges.

“If you support the President politically, you get a job, you get to keep the job,” said Kevin Owen, a lawyer for Lilien. “If you don’t support the President politically, you’re going to lose your job and they’re going to give it to someone else.”

Lilien is seeking unspecified damages, reinstatement to her judgeship, and lost pay, for alleged violations of anti-discrimination and civil-rights laws, and of her First Amendment right to free speech.

The Justice Department on Tuesday declined to comment on claims by Owen or the allegations in the lawsuit.

The department has fired or declined to offer permanent positions to 115 immigration judges during President Donald Trump’s second administration without cause, explanation, or due process, the National Association of Immigration Judges claimed Tuesday.

Owen believes the terminations are intended to intimidate immigration judges into aligning with the Trump administration’s goal of “deporting as many people as possible.”

According to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Lilien decided 377 asylum cases, granting asylum in 66% and denying it in 34%. Around the time of her decisions, the national denial rate was 59% and the denial rate in the Concord immigration court was 42%, TRAC reported.

Another 27 immigration judges fired or not converted from probationary periods near the time of Lilien’s ouster included 14 from the Concord and San Francisco immigration courts, and those removed were “overwhelmingly female,” her lawsuit said.

The Trump administration closed the San Francisco immigration court, one of the nation’s busiest, on May 1. That court’s asylum-denial rate from 2020 through the first 11 months of last year was 29%, according to TRAC.

Close to the time of Lilien’s termination, four white male immigration judges in Concord were retained or had their positions made permanent, the lawsuit said.

“The immigration judges who have been terminated from the Concord Immigration Court are exclusively female,” the lawsuit said, “and the immigration judges who have been converted and newly hired are exclusively male.”

Lilien was appointed in July 2023 as a judge in San Francisco Immigration Court, then was transferred to the Concord court in February 2024, her lawsuit said. Typically, new immigration judges serve for a two-year probationary period before being “routinely converted to permanent positions,” the lawsuit filed May 1 in Oakland federal court said.

Instead, Lilien received an email July 11, while she was conducting a virtual asylum hearing from a Concord immigration courtroom, saying she would not receive a permanent position.

“I have just been fired,” she told lawyers in the hearing.

Her lawsuit alleged that Justice Department officials began removing women from positions in the immigration court system early in Trump’s second term, including high-level judges.

Starting on January 20, 2025, four women in permanent leadership jobs in the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which runs the immigration courts, “were terminated in close succession without stated cause,” the lawsuit said. Among those let go was chief immigration Judge Sheila McNulty, the lawsuit said.

The following month, five female assistant chief immigration judges were ousted, the lawsuit said.

Around that time, the department issued two memos taking aim at diversity hiring, including one in March that claimed people of “certain backgrounds” had received preferential hiring under the administration of former President Joe Biden.

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The memos “laid bare management’s hostility to hiring individuals with immigrants’ rights backgrounds, women, ethnic minorities, and others who may be considered ‘DEI’ hires,” Lilien’s lawsuit said.

The Executive Office of Immigration Review has terminated a disproportionate number of immigration judges who were women, people of color, and ethnic minorities, the lawsuit said.

Lilien’s lawsuit highlights the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across federal agencies and programs. The administration has sought to tie federal education funding to elimination of DEI programs in K-12 schools, and launched an investigation last year into diversity-hiring practices at the University of California. Large numbers of federal research grants to Bay Area universities have been cancelled over alleged connections to DEI, undercutting the Bay Area’s $100 million biotechnology industry.

The administration has argued DEI undermines merit-based hiring and promotions, and can be used for discrimination.

Lilien’s case also raises separation-of-powers issues, with the Trump administration seeking to bypass Congressional job protections for federal workers, her lawyer Owen said.

Immigration judges, appointed by the U.S. Attorney General, have far weaker job protections than judges in federal district or circuit courts and in the U.S. Supreme Court, who are mostly appointed for life and can only be removed through impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate. Immigration judges work for the Justice Department, which can fire them, but lawsuits by Lilien and other former immigration judges dispute the legality of the department’s termination process.

Before taking the job as an immigration judge, Lilien, who has a law degree from UC Berkeley, spent years working as a lawyer advocating for non-citizens in front of the Executive Office of Immigration Review and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the lawsuit said. Her work included managing legal services for Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay, the lawsuit said.

A related lawsuit by former Cleveland immigration court judge Tania Nemer claimed the Justice Department fired her because she’s a woman and originally from Lebanon. The federal government’s argument that it’s entitled to terminate employees without recourse to administrative appeals “would permit the government to fire federal workers based on race, sex, religion, national origin, or political affiliation with impunity,” the lawsuit filed in December in Washington, D.C. federal court claimed.

In a filing, the Justice Department asserted its right to fire Nemer based on Article 2 of the Constitution, which defines presidential powers. Nemer provided no valid evidence of discrimination, the filing argued.