NJ Judge Blamed Frustration for Deporting Truant Teens

A suspended New Jersey municipal court judge told a state judicial disciplinary panel Wednesday that he threatened to have truant teenagers deported because he felt “powerless” and frustrated, and acknowledged he will likely dismiss future truancy cases that come before him.

Britt J. Simon appeared before the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct at the Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex in Trenton, where members pressed him on whether he felt remorse for his conduct and how he planned to handle similar cases. Simon said he yelled at students and their parents during three separate truancy hearings in Bound Brook in August 2024 and January 2025 out of “absolute frustration.”

“I had no idea what to do with them,” Simon told the panel.

The admission came during the second day of Simon’s hearing before the committee. His first appearance in January ran so long the panel continued it until this week. Wednesday’s session stretched similarly, eventually prompting the chair to direct attorneys to skip closing arguments entirely and submit written summations along with disciplinary recommendations by April 15.

The incidents that brought Simon before the panel are striking. In one hearing, he warned a 14-year-old girl from El Salvador that he would personally alert immigration enforcement officers to pick her up if she missed another day of school. In another, he told a 16-year-old boy from El Salvador that his truancy would make him a “beggar piece of garbage” and threatened to have child-protective workers remove him from his home and investigate his mother.

“Look at your mother, get ready to say goodbye to her. Go ahead. Look at her. Look at her now. You want to say goodbye to her? Because once you’re deported, you’re gone and you can’t come back again,” Simon told the boy before ordering him out of the courtroom.

Simon was suspended from the bench in February 2025 after three incidents in which he questioned students and their parents about their immigration status during truancy proceedings.

Several committee members asked Simon directly whether he felt remorse. Simon responded that truancy cases belong in family court rather than municipal court, and said he would dismiss them when parents could demonstrate they had not neglected their responsibilities.

“If there’s already been the revelation that the parent has been doing everything they can, yeah, it would have to be dismissed,” Simon said.

A committee member pressed him on when exactly he reached that conclusion. Simon’s answer was blunt: roughly around the time the complaint against him was filed last July.

Maureen G. Bauman, the committee’s disciplinary counsel, argued that Simon’s threats and what she described as his “abrasive demeanor” violated the standards of dignity, fairness, and patience the judiciary demands of its members.

The case is unfolding against a charged backdrop. Gov. Mikie Sherrill recently signed legislation limiting New Jersey’s role in federal immigration enforcement, reflecting the state’s broader resistance to using local institutions as instruments of deportation. For the families who appeared before Simon, however, that protection came too late. They faced a judge who, by his own account, chose to invoke the threat of federal immigration action against minors as a disciplinary tool in a truancy proceeding.

The distinction matters for New Jersey residents who rely on the courts as a neutral space. Municipal courts handle the day-to-day legal encounters most people in this state will ever have. When a judge uses that platform to threaten a teenager with deportation over missed school days, it corrodes trust in an institution that working-class immigrant families already approach with caution.

Simon’s case now moves to the written submission phase, with the committee’s disciplinary recommendations due mid-April. The panel holds the authority to recommend sanctions ranging from censure to removal.

Whatever the committee decides, Simon’s own testimony drew the clearest picture of his reasoning. He felt frustrated. He felt powerless. And so he turned that frustration on children.