A former ICE attorney alleged racist remarks and a secret reference cost him an immigration judgeship
A federal court has tossed a military veteran's discrimination lawsuit alleging his supervisor torpedoed his career through a damaging reference.
On March 12, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed all five counts with prejudice. The case, brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, raised pointed questions about what happens when a supervisor allegedly goes behind an employee's back to tank a job opportunity, and what it takes to prove that discrimination was the reason.
Arthur Ayo-Aghimien II, a licensed attorney, Air Force veteran, and Black, Christian male born in Nigeria, worked as an attorney at Immigration and Customs Enforcement beginning in 2007. He reported to Deputy Field Counsel Mary-Jean Lambert in ICE's Las Vegas office. According to the complaint, the trouble started when Ayo-Aghimien returned from military deployments. Lambert allegedly told him his absence had burdened the office, that she did not care to hire military types, and that a senior official had apologized for placing him in her office.
The complaint painted a picture of a workplace where Ayo-Aghimien was allegedly frozen out. Lambert reportedly denied him a personal office and made him work in the library while two colleagues — one a Vietnamese-American woman, the other a white, U.S.-born man – were given large, private, windowed offices. She allegedly steered preferred assignments to a colleague and criticized his performance reviews despite what he described as equal or superior work output. When he asked about using one of the vacant offices, Lambert allegedly accused him of trying to start trouble.
The allegations also described remarks that went beyond workplace slights. Lambert allegedly made derogatory comments about Black individuals, questioned the competence of non-white immigration attorneys, and directed anti-Muslim remarks at Ayo-Aghimien, apparently assuming from his national origin, race, and accent that he was Muslim. He is Christian.
In 2014, Ayo-Aghimien applied to become an Immigration Judge. Two years later, he received an offer. According to the complaint, Lambert then contacted the hiring agency, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, and made statements questioning his reliability, character, temperament, and travel history. EOIR allegedly rescinded the tentative appointment immediately, without giving Ayo-Aghimien a chance to respond or independently verifying Lambert's claims. During a subsequent EEOC investigation, Lambert allegedly denied under oath that she had ever communicated with EOIR about him.
The court, however, found that the allegations fell short of what the law requires. Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ruled that the statements Lambert made to EOIR – about reliability, temperament, and a vague situation at a prior posting – did not on their face suggest racial, national origin, religious, gender, or disability-based animus. While the court acknowledged that some of Lambert's earlier workplace remarks could be read as discriminatory, it found no clear link between those isolated comments and the EOIR interview that allegedly cost Ayo-Aghimien the judgeship.
The comparator argument did not hold up either. Ayo-Aghimien pointed to three colleagues who were allegedly treated better, but the court found he had not provided enough detail about their job titles, responsibilities, or performance to establish them as meaningful benchmarks. Only one of the three – Nguyen – had also applied for an Immigration Judge position, and Lambert allegedly did not interfere with her application. But the court found this alone was not enough to cross the line from possibility to plausibility.
The disability discrimination claim under the Rehabilitation Act met the same fate. Ayo-Aghimien, who suffers from PTSD related to his military service, argued that Lambert's references to his temperament and characterizations of his work history as strange were coded language targeting his condition. The court disagreed, finding those descriptions too ambiguous to support an inference of disability-based discrimination.
For HR professionals, this case is a reminder that workplace discrimination claims live and die on specifics. Stray remarks, no matter how offensive, may not be enough if they cannot be tied directly to the adverse employment action in question. Reference practices also deserve attention here – the allegation that a supervisor allegedly provided a damaging reference that derailed a hire is the kind of scenario that keeps HR leaders up at night, regardless of how the legal claims played out.
