Study: Foreign-born judges almost twice as likely to rule against immigration enforcement as federal judiciary average

Foreign-born Article III federal judges are significantly more likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to rule against President Donald Trump’s agenda on border security and immigration enforcement, a new study has found.

Bench Receipts — an organization that tracks judges, prosecutors, sheriffs, and their decisions or actions on key issues — published an audit Oct. 19 analyzing decisions by all 128 foreign-born judges in the U.S. and comparing them to the federal judiciary's average baseline.

Article III federal judges are those appointed under Article III of the U.S. Constitution. They serve lifetime appointments, unless they retire or are impeached, and rule on matters related to the U.S. Constitution. Article III judges include Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and judges on federal appellate or district courts or the Court of International Trade. Of the 128 foreign-born judges in the U.S., 58 are Article III federal judges, while the other 70 are federal magistrate, state and county trial, or state supreme and appellate court judges.

According to Bench Receipts’ audit, based on publicly available records and news reports, the 58 foreign-born Article III judges ruled against the Trump administration’s border security and immigration enforcement actions in 60.4% of cases, while Article III judges on average rule against the Trump administration’s border security and immigration enforcement actions in 34% of cases.

Trump appointed only 12 of the foreign-born Article III judges. Of those, 10 ruled against the Trump administration’s border security and immigration enforcement actions in fewer than 25% of cases. English-born District Judge Nancy Brasel, appointed by Trump, ruled against the Trump administration on immigration in 48% of cases, and Panamanian-born District Judge Franklin U. Valderrama, also appointed by Trump, ruled against the Trump administration on immigration in 51% of cases.

The other 46 foreign-born Article III judges were appointed by either former presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden. According to Zeale News’ review of the data from Bench Receipts, Article III judges appointed by either Obama or Biden ruled against the Trump administration on immigration in 70% of cases on average.

English-born District Judge Jon Tigar, appointed by Obama, ruled against the Trump administration’s immigration agenda in 94% of cases. In East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump, he ruled against presidential actions requiring foreign nationals applying for asylum to make their petitions at U.S. ports of entry, instead of at any point that they encounter federal authorities.

Trinidadian and Tobagonian-born District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, appointed by Biden, also ruled against the Trump administration in 94% of immigration cases. In Thein v. Trump, she ruled that the Trump administration could not apply a travel ban to Diversity Immigrant Visa program recipients from the banned countries. She also ruled that the Trump administration could not compile a federal citizenship database, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court later set aside, and subsequently ruled that the administration could not compel states to cross-reference voter rolls against the database to remove non-citizens who are ineligible to vote.

Uruguayan-born District Judge Ana Reyes, appointed by Biden, ruled against the Trump administration on immigration in 92% of cases. She was responsible early in 2026 for blocking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from terminating temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitian nationals, a case which was later consolidated with a TPS claim for Syrian nationals and reversed by the Supreme Court.

District Judge Amir Ali, born in Canada to Egyptian parents and appointed by Biden, ruled against the Trump administration’s immigration agenda in 91% of cases. In one case, Ali  blocked an administration policy prohibiting federal immigration courts from using taxpayer dollars to fund immigration lawyers. In another, he barred DHS from collecting biometric data from detained illegal aliens. In yet another case, Ali ruled that the administration could not withhold federal taxpayer dollars from states or cities with sanctuary policies in place protecting illegal aliens.

Bench Receipts also noted that many of the foreign-born judges appointed by Obama and Biden have backgrounds working as public defenders or attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Those with public defender and ACLU histories ruled against the Trump administration in 80% of immigration-related cases.

Bench Receipts said that the foreign-born judges “do not judge on our laws, they judge on the culture they came from. This is a huge reason our country has lost its identity.”