The husband of the Biden-appointed judge who ruled earlier this week that federal immigration agents must obtain individual arrest warrants on all suspected illegal aliens before detaining them has a financial interest in seeing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts halted, according to a new report.
Independent journalist Laura Loomer, in a lengthy X post, wrote that the husband of U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston, who recently ruled that the Trump administration may not arrest additional undocumented immigrants without a warrant, is a California multifamily real estate broker. She said Marc A. Thurston works primarily with “the illegal alien and immigrant community,” and has posted on Instagram criticizing Trump’s mass‑deportation and immigration policies as harmful to multifamily real‑estate brokers and investors.
“This is a massive CONFLICT OF INTEREST that casts doubt on Judge Thurston’s April 29th, 2025 issuance of a preliminary injunction forbidding the US Border Patrol from conducting warrantless immigration stops throughout a wide swath of California,” Loomer wrote.
“This injunction applies to Kern County, California, including Bakersfield, CA, where Judge Thurston’s husband is in business as a multi-family real estate broker,” she wrote, noting further:
Marc A. Thurston, Judge Thurston’s husband and Senior Vice President at ASU Commercial, specializes in Bakersfield’s multifamily real estate market. In video evidence exclusively obtained by @LoomerUnleashed @CcpSkipTracer, Marc Thurston stated on his Instagram account in multiple videos he filmed this year since President Trump’s inauguration, that deportations of “undocumented immigrants” would harm the local rental market in Bakersfield, directly affecting his business, which relies on immigration enforcement outcomes since over 15,000 “undocumented workers” as he calls them, work in the Central Valley of California, and many of these illegals reside in multi-family housing where Marc Thurston and his wife Judge Jennifer Thurston live in California.
Judge Jennifer L. Thurston should have recused herself from the Trump admin case due to bias and personal financial gain resulting from her ruling, which benefits her husband’s business.
According to the “Federal Judiciary and Judicial Procedure” guidelines that all US Federal Judges are required to follow, a judge is required to recuse themselves from a case if they find themselves conflicted with any of the following rules below:
28 U.S.C. § 455(a): Requires recusal if a reasonable person, knowing all facts, might question the judge’s impartiality.
28 U.S.C. § 455(b)(4): Mandates recusal if the judge’s spouse has a financial interest that could be substantially affected by the case’s outcome.
Loomer also included video clips of Marc Thurston discussing the situation and warning landlords that they could be facing lots of vacancies in the near future. In a subsequent post, Loomer said that Marc Thurston deleted the clips from his social media.
It should be noted that Judge Thurston’s order only applies to federal immigration agents operating in her district, according to Newsweek.
Thurston limited the authority of U.S. Border Patrol agents in her district, prohibiting them from arresting individuals suspected of being undocumented immigrants without a warrant unless they have reason to believe the person would flee before a warrant could be secured.
She ruled that Border Patrol agents must have reasonable suspicion before stopping individuals and cannot pressure them into “voluntary departure” unless they have been informed of their rights and freely consent.
Thurston’s ruling comes after a January immigration enforcement campaign known as “Operation Return to Sender,” during which dozens of individuals, many of whom are farmworkers or day laborers, were detained, Newsweek added.
The ACLU sued over the operation, accusing Border Patrol agents of violating the Constitution by detaining individuals who “appeared to be farmworkers or day laborers, regardless of their actual immigration status or individual circumstances.”