Federal immigration judges fired by the Trump administration are filing appeals, pursuing legal action and speaking out in an unusually public campaign to fight back.

More than 50 immigration judges — from senior leaders to new appointees — have been fired since Donald Trump assumed the presidency for the second time. Normally bound by courtroom decorum, many are now unrestrained in describing terminations they consider unlawful and why they believe they were targeted.

Their suspected reasons include gender discrimination, decisions on immigration cases played up by the Trump administration and a courthouse tour with the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat.

“I cared about my job and was really good at it,” Jennifer Peyton, a former supervising judge told The Associated Press this week. “That letter that I received, the three sentences, explained no reason why I was fired.”

Peyton, who received the notice while on a July Fourth family vacation, was appointed judge in 2016. She considered it her dream job. Peyton was later named assistant chief immigration judge in Chicago, helping to train, mentor and oversee judges. She was a visible presence in the busy downtown court, greeting outside observers.

She cited top-notch performance reviews and said she faced no disciplinary action. Peyton said she’ll appeal through the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent government agency Trump has also targeted.

Peyton’s theories about why she was fired include appearing on a “bureaucrat watchdog list” of people accused by a right-wing organization of working against the Trump agenda. She also questions a courthouse tour she gave to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois in June.

Durbin blasted Peyton’s termination as an “abuse of power,” saying he’s visited before as part of his duties as a publicly-elected official.

The nation’s immigration courts — with a backlog of about 3.5 million cases — have become a key focus of Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement efforts. The firings are on top of resignations, early retirements and transfers, adding up to 106 judges gone since January, according to the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents judges. There are currently about 600 immigration judges.

Several of those fired, including Peyton, have recently done a slew of interviews on local Chicago television stations and with national outlets, saying they now have a platform for their colleagues who remain on the bench.

“The ones that are left are feeling threatened and very uncertain about their future,” said Matt Biggs, the union’s president.

Carla Espinoza, a Chicago immigration judge since 2023, was fired as she was delivering a verdict this month. Her notice said she’d be dismissed at the end of her two-year probationary period with the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment in Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday for a brief hearing after an appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural win.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer put off issuing any additional rulings and instead asked for briefings from both sides by noon Monday on whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles.

The hearing happened the day after the 9th Circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his complaint that “violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway” but Breyer last week postponed considering that allegation.

Vice President JD Vance, a Marine veteran, traveled to Los Angeles on Friday and met with troops, including U.S. Marines who have been deployed to protect federal buildings.

According to Vance, the court determined Trump’s determination to send in federal troops “was legitimate” and he will do it again if necessary.

“The president has a very simple proposal to everybody in every city, every community, every town whether big or small, if you enforce your own laws and if you protect federal law enforcement, we’re not going to send in the National Guard because it’s unnecessary,” Vance told journalists after touring a federal complex in Los Angeles.

Vance’s tour of a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations have calmed after sometimes-violent clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and break-ins that followed immigration raids across Southern California earlier this month. Tens of thousands have also marched peacefully in Los Angeles since June 8.

National Guard troops have been accompanying federal agents on some immigration raids, and Marines briefly detained a man on the first day they deployed to protect a federal building. The marked the first time federal troops detained a civilian since deploying to the nation’s second-largest city.

Breyer found Trump acted illegally when, over opposition from California’s governor, the president activated the soldiers. However, the appellate decision halted the judge’s temporary restraining order. Breyer asked the lawyers on Friday to address whether he or the appellate court retains primary jurisdiction to grant an injunction under the Posse Comitatus Act.

California has sought a preliminary injunction giving Newsom back control of the troops in Los Angeles, where protests have calmed down in recent days.

Trump, a Republican, argued that the troops have been necessary to restore order. Newsom, a Democrat, said their presence on the streets of a U.S. city inflamed tensions, usurped local authority and wasted resources.

The demonstrations appear to be winding down, although dozens of protesters showed up Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where a group of federal agents gathered at a parking lot with their faces covered, traveling in SUVs and cargo vans. The Los Angeles Dodgers organization asked them to leave, and they did.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass lifted a downtown curfew that was first imposed in response to vandalism and clashes with police after crowds gathered in opposition to agents taking migrants into detention.

Trump federalized members of the California National Guard under an authority known as Title 10.

Title 10 allows the president to call the National Guard into federal service when the country “is invaded,” when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,” or when the president is otherwise unable “to execute the laws of the United States.”

Breyer found that Trump had overstepped his legal authority, which he said allows presidents to control state National Guard troops only during times of “rebellion or danger of a rebellion.”

“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’ ” wrote Breyer, a Watergate prosecutor who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and is the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

The Trump administration argued that courts can’t second-guess the president’s decisions. The appellate panel ruled otherwise, saying presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, but the panel said that by citing violent acts by protesters in this case, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for federalizing the troops.

For now, the California National Guard will stay in federal hands as the lawsuit proceeds. It is the first deployment by a president of a state National Guard without the governor’s permission since troops were sent to protect Civil Rights Movement marchers in 1965.

Trump celebrated the appellate ruling in a social media post, calling it a “BIG WIN” and hinting at more potential deployments.

Newsom, for his part, has also warned that California won’t be the last state to see troops in the streets if Trump gets his way.

A judge blocked New York City’s mayor from letting federal immigration authorities reopen an office at the city’s main jail, in part because of concerns the mayor invited them back in as part of a deal with the Trump administration to end his corruption case.

New York Judge Mary Rosado’s decision Friday is a setback for Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who issued an executive order permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the Rikers Island jail complex. City lawmakers filed a lawsuit in April accusing Adams of entering into a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration in exchange for the U.S. Justice Department dropping criminal charges against him.

Rosado temporarily blocked the executive order in April. In granting a preliminary injunction, she said city council members have “shown a likelihood of success in demonstrating, at minimum, the appearance of a quid pro quo whereby Mayor Adams publicly agreed to bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (”ICE”) back to Rikers Island in exchange for dismissal of his criminal charges.”

Rosado cited a number of factors, including U.S. border czar Tom Homan’s televised comments in February that if Adams did not come through, “I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ”

Adams has repeatedly denied making a deal with the administration over the criminal case. He has said he deputized his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to handle decision-making on the return of ICE to Rikers Island to make sure there was no appearance of any conflict of interest.

Rosado said that Mastro reports to Adams and “cannot be considered impartial and free from Mayor Adams’ conflicts.”

Mastro said in a prepared statement Friday the administration was confident they will prevail in the case. “Let’s be crystal clear: This executive order is about the criminal prosecution of violent transnational gangs committing crimes in our city. Our administration has never, and will never, do anything to jeopardize the safety of law-abiding immigrants, and this executive order ensures their safety as well,” Mastro said.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running in the Democratic primary for mayor, called the decision a victory for public safety.

“New Yorkers are counting on our city to protect their civil rights, and yet, Mayor Adams has attempted to betray this obligation by handing power over our city to Trump’s ICE because he is compromised,” she said in a prepared statement.

State and local officials blasted the Trump administration’s widely anticipated list of “sanctuary” jurisdictions that are deemed uncooperative with federal immigration enforcement, with some of the most enthusiastic supporters of the White House wondering on Friday how they wound up on it.

The list, which was riddled with misspellings, included sparsely populated counties that have little interaction with immigration authorities, that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump and that have actively supported his hard-line immigration policies.

In California, the city of Huntington Beach made the list of hundreds even though it filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s immigration sanctuary law and passed a resolution this year declaring the community a “non-sanctuary city.”

“At first when I heard it I was like, accidents happen,” said Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns. But after seeing so many other cities lumped in like his, he called it “negligent.” “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document ? somebody’s got to answer to that.”

Meanwhile, those with policies protecting immigrants also pushed back, saying they are doing right by their communities.

“This is simply the latest attempt by the Trump administration to strong-arm cities like Seattle into changing our local policies through bluster and threats to critical federal funding for public safety and homelessness,” Bruce Harrell, the city’s mayor, told The Associated Press in an email. “It’s not going to work ? the law is on our side ? and we will not hesitate to protect our people and stand up for our values.”

The list was published as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to follow through on the president’s campaign promises to remove millions of people who are in the country illegally. It came out as Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced major leadership changes, and after a White House official said the administration wanted to increase daily immigration arrests.

Misspelled communities on the list included Cincinnati, which was spelled Cincinnatti. Also, some counties were mislabeled as cities and vice versa.

The administration has said each listed jurisdiction will receive formal notification that the government has deemed them noncompliant and if they’re believed to be in violation of any federal criminal statutes.

In response to questions Friday about the list, the Department of Homeland security reiterated that it was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they complied with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or had any legal protections for people in the country illegally.

A unanimous Supreme Court made it easier Thursday to bring lawsuits over so-called reverse discrimination, siding with an Ohio woman who claims she didn’t get a job and then was demoted because she is straight.

The justices’ decision affects lawsuits in 20 states and the District of Columbia where, until now, courts had set a higher bar when members of a majority group, including those who are white and heterosexual, sue for discrimination under federal law.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court that federal civil rights law draws no distinction between members of majority and minority groups.

“By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’ — without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group — Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” Jackson wrote.

The court ruled in an appeal from Marlean Ames, who has worked for the Ohio Department of Youth Services for more than 20 years.

Ames contends she was passed over for a promotion and then demoted because she is heterosexual. Both the job she sought and the one she had held were given to LGBTQ people.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars sex discrimination in the workplace. A trial court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ames.

The 6th circuit is among the courts that had required an additional requirement for people like Ames, showing “background circumstances” that might include that LGBTQ people made the decisions affecting Ames or statistical evidence of a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group.

The appeals court noted that Ames didn’t provide any such circumstances.

But Jackson wrote that “this additional ‘background circumstances’ requirement is not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.”