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A Third Of All DC District Judges Were Not Born In United States
By Beth Brelje | March 25, 2025
Of all the judges in the U.S. all five foreign-born judges of the D.C. court managed to get their fingerprints on controversial Trump cases.
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the source of many of the cases interfering with President Donald Trump's authority, has 15 judges, (Counting Chief Judge James Boasberg) and five of them were born outside the United States.
While country of origin doesn't come up in most jobs, it is worth asking if judges with ties to foreign nations and cultures are the right ones to make decisions affecting the U.S. military or immigration.
The concept of foreign-born judges is a newer phenomenon in this district. In addition to the 15 main judges, the D.C. District has 10 older, senior judges who still occasionally hear cases in the district. This group, nominated as far back as Ronald Reagan the 1980s, were all born in the U.S.
But starting in 2014, former President Barack Obama appointed Judge Tanya Sue Chutkan, born in Kingston, Jamaica. She was in the U.S. by 1979, attending George Washington University. Before sitting on federal court, she had no experience as a judge. Chutkan is overseeing the legal challenge to DOGE's work to slash excess government spending.
Obama also appointed Judge Amit P. Mehta to the D.C. court. Mehta also had no previous experience as a judge. Mehta was born in Patan, Gujarat, India. He and his parents came to the U.S. when he was a baby, age one. He was raised in Maryland. Mehta will oversee four January 6 civil cases that aim to blame Trump for injuries and squeeze money, court time, and political embarrassment out of him.
The other three foreign born judges were nominated by former President Joe Biden. [Editor's note: Biden didn't nominate them. Biden's handlers nominated them.]
Judge Ana Cecilia Reyes was nominated in 2021, also with no prior experience as a judge. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay and moved to Spain, and while still a child, moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where she grew up. She is the first openly LGBT Latina to be appointed to this court. Reyes presided over an objection to Trump's executive order declaring "gender dysphoria" as "inconsistent" with the "high standards for troop readiness," as The Federalist's Shawn Fleetwood reported. Reyes blocked Trump’s order with a preliminary injunction.
The first Muslim and Arab American in the D.C. district court, Judge Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali was born and raised in Canada to Egyptian parents. According to his Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees, Ali was not required to register for the U.S. Selective Service. That is because he was not a citizen until 2019. He graduated from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada with a software engineering degree in 2008 and then attended Harvard Law School in the U.S., graduating with a law degree in 2011. He worked as a volunteer on Biden's 2020 transition team and for a phone bank in support of Biden's presidential campaign. He worked for some nonprofits but never served as a judge until Biden appointed him in 2024. Amir has written extensively and negatively about Trump's so-called "Travel ban," a 2017 Executive Order which restricted travel to the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days.
Please go to The Federalist to continue reading.
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