US President Donald Trump’s Justice Department on Friday fired two immigration judges who previously ruled for pro-Palestinian activists facing removal proceedings, adding to a growing number of administrative judge dismissals.

Judges Roopal Patel and Nina Froes occupied probationary judgeship positions when the administration informed them they would not gain permanent status. The firings occurred following rulings by each judge on separate deportation proceedings involving student-activists Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi.

Patel, an immigration judge in Boston, said the firings were likely “informed by a kind of political agenda to kind of reshape the immigration bench to reflect the policy agenda of the current administration to be one of mass deportations.” Given her experience representing immigrants, she believed she “could have ruled either way in that case and probably would have still ended up fired.” 

The Merit Systems Protection Board ruled in March that the attorney general may constitutionally fire immigration judges as Justice Department appointees, a power that comes from executive branch-authority to execute laws through its officers. The board held that administrative judges are “inferior officers” within the executive branch, despite traditional understandings that judicial roles are distinct from other executive political appointments.

In January, Patel found that the Department of Homeland Security had not met its burden to remove Öztürk.

Öztürk, a Tufts University student at the time, faced removal proceedings after the government revoked her student visa. This came after she wrote an op-ed that criticized Tufts for not adopting student-passed resolutions about Israel and Palestine.

Similarly, Froes ruled against the Trump administration when she dismissed a case against Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student who participated in Israel-Palestine protests on campus.

The National Association of Immigration Judges, an immigration judge union, reported that Patel and Froes were two of six judges fired over the weekend. According to the union, the administration has fired over 100 immigration judges since Trump took office, noting this rarely occurred before the president’s second term.