A veteran immigration judge in Annandale, Virginia, says Justice Department supervisors ordered her to reverse rulings in deportation cases before she was removed from detained-immigrant cases and ultimately fired, according to an investigation by The Washington Post published on October 24, 2026. The account is her allegation; the department denies directing outcomes.

Source: The Washington Post via Tickle The Wire

Karen Donoso Stevens, who had served as an immigration judge since 2016 after previously working as a Homeland Security prosecutor, told the Post that a supervisor ordered her in September 2025 to reverse four decisions granting bond to immigrants. According to notes reviewed by the newspaper, the supervisor said unidentified “higher-ups” wanted the decisions vacated, even though Justice Department officials had publicly maintained that immigration judges could not be directed to rule a certain way.

Donoso Stevens said the pressure continued: in November, the head of the immigration court system demanded explanations for six other bond decisions, and in January another supervisor told her that court-ordered bond hearings did not mean she had to grant bond. She said she responded: “If bond is warranted — if they prove they're not a danger or a flight risk — then I'm going to grant bond.” Less than a week later, she was abruptly pulled from her courtroom in Annandale and reassigned away from detained cases, according to her account published by the Post.

Source: VisaVerge

Donoso Stevens was fired in May, nine months before she would have become eligible for her pension, according to the Post's reporting. Her termination letter cited Article II of the Constitution, referring to executive branch authority, but did not give a specific reason for her dismissal. She is now among a group of former immigration judges challenging their removals.

What the Justice Department says

The Justice Department denied that it seeks particular outcomes in immigration cases. “DOJ's approach is to impartially adjudicate cases as efficiently as possible in accordance with the law and evidence,” an Executive Office for Immigration Review spokesperson told the Post. “It does not view adjudications in terms of outcomes and does not have a stake in any particular outcome.” The department and other officials named in Donoso Stevens' account did not respond to the newspaper's specific allegations.

Immigration courts operate inside the Justice Department, so their judges are executive-branch employees rather than independent federal judges — a structure that has long fuelled debate about political pressure on deportation decisions. For immigrant families in Virginia and across the United States, bond decisions decide whether a detained person waits at home or in custody while a removal case runs, which can take months or years.