Melissa Isaak has dedicated much of her legal practice to advocating solely for men, often asserting that women are adept at manipulation and seek attention by portraying themselves as victims.
Her criticism of women is so pronounced that she has claimed they have children merely to secure child support and spend their days at home under the influence of Xanax.
Isaak has even gone so far as to label women in derogatory terms, describing them as nothing more than “warm wet holes” on multiple occasions.
A former Alabama judge recounted witnessing Isaak “viciously dismantle women, including survivors of domestic violence, in the courtroom like an aggressive predator.”
“I have never observed anyone pursue women so ruthlessly during legal proceedings,” the judge remarked.
Now Donald Trump’s administration has made Isaak, 49, an immigration judge, a job that frequently will have her deciding the fates of single moms and abuse victims – the kinds of women she has made a living denigrating.
Her appointment has drawn scrutiny by legal experts who question her fitness to be a fair judge.
‘All sorts of vulnerable women will have cases coming before her. Whether they’re allowed to stay in this country hinges on her impartiality, which is in question,’ said Dana Leigh Marks, a Reagan appointee who served 35 years judging immigration cases.
Melissa Isaak, 49, has been appointed as an immigration judge under President Trump despite her history of incendiary remarks about women
The Alabama lawyer has built her career defending men while attacking women as ‘manipulators’
‘This appointment is egregiously tone deaf. It exacerbates the feeling that [judges] are being recruited solely to grease the wheels for removal. They are not even bothering to try to hide their agenda,’ Marks added about the Trump administration.
Isaak declined to comment for this story, as did the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which she now works for what the federal job posting indicates may be up to $207,500 per year.
In early April, that office appointed the right-wing family law lawyer to hear cases involving deportation and removal, asylum, bond requests and other immigration matters.
This, despite the fact that she and several other new appointees have no apparent experience in immigration law.
Isaak has kept her personal life private, but has made reference to being a wife and mother to kids who are home-schooled.
She made a name for herself in Trump World for defending three rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
She also was part of the legal team representing Republican Roy Moore after his 2017 US Senate bid in Alabama when multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, which he denied, and he sued some of them for defamation. His legal attempts to clear his name largely failed.
A former child therapist and major in the Army Reserve, Isaak has spent the bulk of her legal career defending men in family law cases, mainly divorce and child custody battles.
Isaak previously represented January 6 defendants and was part of Republican Roy Moore’s legal team when multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, which he denied
Records reviewed by the Daily Mail show her willingness to take the gloves off in court, portraying clients as victims of irrational, gold-digging and otherwise manipulative women.
In speaking engagements at right-wing and anti-feminist events, Isaak has referred to her experience as the daughter of a single mother she has described as ‘toxic’ and derided as ‘always bitching about child support.’
It was her mother, she has said, who aimed to teach her to ‘Use your vagina to manipulate a man to get the results you want.’
We attempted to reach Isaak’s mother for comment.
‘Women don’t know how to be women,’ Isaak has said of fellow members of her gender, whom she has generalized as expecting to be ‘treated like queens’ while getting ‘coked up on Xanax’ and ‘sitting home not doing anything all day.’
She has warned men against being ‘blinded by sex’ and cautions against a world full of women having babies simply to collect child support payments, which she calls ‘free money.’
She also has publicly referred to a woman she served with in the Army as ‘a dumpster whore.’
Isaak urges men – even those in seemingly solid relationships – to record and gather other evidence against their wives and girlfriends, including installing security cameras, as legal protection down the road.
‘The best time to build a case is when there’s no case at all,’ she advised.
Isaak will now preside over cases involving vulnerable migrants, including women fleeing violence (pictured: asylum seekers waiting to claim asylum at a border crossing in San Diego in 2019)
Immigration judges decide asylum, deportation and abuse-related claims – often with life-altering consequences
She has asserted that more men are victims of domestic violence than women — a claim that FBI data soundly contradicts. And she has spoken about raising her own son to be leery of women, especially independent ones.
‘Women are master manipulators. They are. Look, I’ve seen it. I was raised by one, and I’ve spent my career watching it. They’re master manipulators,’ she has said.
Isaak’s ‘warm wet hole’ verbiage wasn’t just a rhetorical slip-up or one-off. She has used that language on several occasions to chastise women for being shallow non-contributors in marriages.
She has contrasted ‘real women’ to women whose only value is sexual access, and said a ‘real woman’ should serve to ‘catapult a man’ financially.
‘If the only thing you have to offer a man is sex, that’s what you are. And guess what, guess who else has a warm wet hole? Every other woman out there.’
She has doubled down in response to criticisms of her remarks, even going so far as to quip that if a woman is not sufficiently ‘warm and wet,’ ‘you might want to seek some sort of gynecological intervention.’
Isaak’s appointment comes after the Trump administration ousted scores of immigration judges that it deemed inadequate for not kicking more immigrants out of the US.
The Justice Department has in recent months scrambled to fill those vacancies with candidates viewed as enforcement-oriented and ideologically aligned with Trump’s agenda to deport millions of immigrants from the country.
Records reviewed by the Daily Mail show her willingness to go full steam in court, portraying clients as victims of irrational, gold-digging and otherwise manipulative women. She is pictured in a Facebook post shared by her law firm
Isaak, who served in the military, also has publicly referred to a woman she served with in the Army as ‘a dumpster whore’
Her hiring in early April was announced along with 33 others – half of whom will serve permanently on the bench and the other half, like Isaak, will serve temporarily.
As the job is described, some of the new judges hear cases remotely, meaning they aren’t face-to-face in person with the people whose immigration status they’re deciding.
Isaak is among many with no apparent experience in immigration law, a specialty some experts say is even more complex than tax law, especially in light of a slew of recent federal cases either temporarily staying or permanently reversing Trump’s immigration policies.
Despite the increasing complexity, new immigration judges are now receiving less than half the training they used to, per Justice Department policy, which nixed a requirement that appointees have at least 10 years experience in immigration law.
Marks, now retired from the bench in San Francisco, noted that immigration judges don’t have nearly the time to weigh decisions nor the same level of support from clerks afforded to other kinds of jurists.
And, she added, unlike most judges, they can be fired if the Justice Department doesn’t approve of their decisions.
‘It appears as if the administration has changed their standards in order to pack the court with individuals who will superficially look at cases rather than look at them in a deeper fashion,’ she said of the new, laxer rules for appointees.
She also noted that stacking judgeships with political lackeys might backfire against the Trump administration because their rulings could be appealed and reversed based on records of obvious bias:
‘When there’s a basic disregard for impartiality, that’s extremely short-sighted.’
Jeremiah Johnson worked for eight years as an immigration judge in California after having been appointed during the first Trump administration. He is one of dozens fired in recent months without explanation.
All immigration judges, he said, ‘hear many cases involving domestic violence, gender-specific or gender-based harm,’ and Isaak will be no exception.
‘That is part of the job that you have to hear many accounts of horrific abuse, including rape and torture, against women.’
As the vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, Johnson said he couldn’t comment specifically on Isaak’s appointment.
He did, however, emphasize that, ‘The perception of impartiality is crucial to the rule of law.’
‘You want to have as strong and independent a bench as possible,’ he said. ‘That is what we stand for. And it’s what we’re working to preserve, despite many challenges right now.’
