In a courtroom echoing with years-old controversy, Massachusetts Judge Shelley Joseph stood before a disciplinary panel on Monday, fighting for her career over allegations that once sparked national headlines: that she helped a migrant defendant evade federal immigration agents by slipping him out the courthouse’s rear exit.
The hearing, held in Boston, marked a new chapter in a saga that began during the Trump administration. Though the criminal case against Joseph was dropped in 2022—after a deal requiring her to self-report to disciplinary authorities—the shadows of those charges now loom large in this judicial misconduct inquiry.
At the heart of the hearing is an unrecorded 52-second sidebar conversation from April 2018. During that exchange, Joseph allegedly agreed to a defense attorney’s plan that would guide his client—facing minor drug charges but also the threat of an ICE arrest—through the courthouse lockup and out a back door, bypassing agents waiting in the lobby.
Defense attorney David Jellinek, the prosecution’s key witness, painted a picture of quiet collusion. He claimed he asked the judge to permit the off-the-record discussion because it was “right on the edge of acceptable,” and testified that Joseph had said, “That’s what we’ll do.” He said the maneuver was designed to give his client—wrongly accused of being a fugitive from another state—a shot at freedom without immediate immigration detention.
But Joseph’s legal team fiercely rejected the account. Her attorney, Elizabeth Mulvey, argued the judge had merely allowed a private conversation between the man and his lawyer in lockup and assumed ICE would follow routine protocol thereafter. Joseph, she maintained, had no knowledge that the man exited through the back.
Mulvey also questioned Jellinek’s reliability, noting that he had been granted immunity to testify and had shifted his version of events over time. She emphasized how media narratives had prematurely crowned Joseph a villain or vigilante, saying the public “100% wrongly believed” she enabled the escape.
“This hearing isn’t about politics,” argued commission counsel Judith Fabricant. “It’s about the integrity, impartiality, and independence that every judge must uphold.” The commission’s inquiry, she said, probes whether Joseph’s actions—criminal or not—crossed ethical lines unbecoming of a sitting judge.
The outcome of this case could reshape Judge Joseph’s future on the bench—and challenge how far judges can, or should, go when justice meets immigration enforcement at the courthouse door.
