“Having that taken away from him, especially for what appears to be improper reasons, is something he wants to fight against,” said Owen, a partner at Gilbert Employment Law in Silver Spring, Md.
The Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
Pappas is one of several immigration judges fired during the Trump administration who are challenging their dismissals. Some of the other judges who have filed lawsuits against the DOJ claim the Trump administration has unlawfully targeted judges who are women and people of color. Immigration experts said the over 100 dismissals of immigration judges seem like part of a broader push by Trump to reshape the immigration court system.
Immigration judges work for a DOJ agency called the Executive Office for Immigration Review which runs the immigration courts. They can be summarily removed by the administration.
A DOJ official previously told the Globe, after firing the judge who ended the government’s deportation proceedings against Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University graduate student arrested last year by ICE agents in Somerville, that judges have a “legal, ethical, and professional obligation to be impartial and neutral in adjudicating cases” and it is the agency’s responsibility to fire them if they show bias.
Pappas was terminated in July at the end of his two-year probationary period, a point where most judges are converted to a permanent position.
But he argued that the Justice Department never gave him a “legitimate, non-discriminatory justification” for his removal.
The lawsuit states that Pappas, during his time as an immigration judge, never received any negative reviews or discipline that would constitute grounds for termination; on the contrary, his work allegedly “exceeded all performance standards.”
Of the 120 asylum cases that Pappas saw from the bench in the 2025 fiscal year, he granted relief to just 30, or roughly a quarter of the claims, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That rate was lower than both the local and national averages for immigration judges, which tend to approve anywhere from 40 to 50 percent of claims.
But even with his tough case record, the suit alleges that Pappas’ legal background in immigration advocacy caused the Trump administration to view him as ideologically suspect.
Before his appointment as an immigration judge in July 2023, Pappas worked as a private immigration attorney. He also provided pro bono services to various immigrant and refugee groups, including the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and the Boston-based PAIR Project.
The suit suggests that immigration judges who were previously involved in immigration advocacy work have been systematically removed from their positions under the Trump administration. Conversely, the suit claims, the judges converted to permanent positions tend to have legal backgrounds that are “exclusively prosecutorial.”
Pappas also alleged that he and other fired judges were targeted due to their older ages, as well as foreign-sounding surnames; many of the fired judges had names indicating they were of Hispanic, Middle Eastern, or South Asian descent.
“Plaintiff Pappas was not converted [to a permanent role] because of his national origin (Greek), age (over 40), association with Latin American and Hispanic individuals, and association with immigrant rights organizations,” the suit read.
In the last 10 days, Owen’s firm has filed five additional lawsuits on behalf of other immigration judges who were let go by the Trump administration, Owen said.
The litigation accuses the Trump administration of claiming its authority to hire and fire executive branch officials can override federal anti-discrimination protections.
“They’re saying the president and the attorney general are immune from anti-discrimination laws,” Owen said. “That’s something that our client … strongly disagrees with, as well as our other immigration judge clients.”
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports. Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her @lauracrimaldi.