N.J. judge targeted students with ICE threats, panel urges removal

Summary

• New Jersey advisory committee recommends removal of Britt Simon
• Simon threatened students with ICE deportation in court
• Committee cites ethnic and socioeconomic bias in Simon’s conduct
• Simon suspended since February 2025 pending Supreme Court decision

In a blistering opinion, the New Jersey state Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct has recommended that a municipal court judge be removed from the bench for “significant violations” of judicial conduct in handling school truancy cases.

A majority of committee members on June 16 recommended that Britt Simon be permanently removed from the bench for his treatment of Bound Brook High School students whose parents faced truancy charges for allowing their children to be absent from school.

In its decision, the committee wrote that Simon’s ethical breaches were “undeniable.”

Simon, the decision says, “demeaned, degraded and sought to terrify these students into compliance, referring to one as ‘vile,’ ‘contemptuous’ and ‘disgusting,’ threatening another with placement in a group home and with Division of Child Protection and Permanency involvement, and warning each of potential deportation if truancy continued.”

In one case, the decision says, Simon even threatened to “personally have ICE” retrieve a student from the courtroom if the student missed another day of school.

The committee found that Simon’s “overt attempts to degrade, bully and intimidate” students and their parents “irreparably impaired his integrity and impartiality.”

Simon’s misconduct, the committee wrote, “betrays not only a lack of sound judgment and self-control, but the appearance of an ethnic and socioeconomic bias.”

The committee also found that Simon’s bias toward Bound Brook students was “abhorrent.” He treated those students “more harshly than the allegedly truant Bridgewater students, suggesting a bias, or at minimum the appearance of a bias, on (Simon’s) part against socioeconomically disadvantaged ethnic minorities.”

The committee wrote that Simon’s behavior “reveals a stark lack of integrity” and “an unfitness to serve on the bench.”

It also noted that during a hearing, Simon “was neither contrite nor prepared with an alternative approach.”

Simon, the committee said, “remains unremorseful for his misconduct and has, in fact, refused, throughout these proceedings, to accept responsibility for his several ethical breaches.”

Instead, the committee wrote, Simon “at every opportunity” sought to deflect responsibility for his misconduct onto his presiding judge, Gerard Shamy, and the judiciary generally.

The charges stem from three separate cases in Bound Brook Municipal Court on Aug. 23, 2024, and Jan. 28, 2025.

In the Jan. 28 case, shortly after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, a 14-year-old whose mother was living in the United States without legal status had missed 67 of the previous 91 days of school.

“Hey, there’s a new sheriff in town,” Simon told the student, according to the complaint. “You’re illegal, you’re getting deported. … ICE officials wait outside the door for people like you. Get your hands out of your pocket. Stand up straight.”

Simon then warned, according to the complaint, “You miss another day of school and I’m going to personally have ICE pick you up.”

“You’re about to get plucked up by ICE officials and sent back to El Salvador,” Simon continued, according to the complaint. “Do you want to go there?”

In one of the August cases, Simon told a student, “You’re looking to be a beggar, a piece of garbage” who wants to be “the filth of the earth who hangs out behind the Dunkin’ store here in town who beat each other.” He also told the student that at some point ICE would pick up the student’s mother “all because of you.”

In an email to Shamy, a copy of which is included in court papers, Simon wrote, “Kids in Bound Brook refuse to go to school. This is quite different than the kids in Bridgewater. Bridgewater kids are easily terrified and after a good tongue-lashing, they go back to school and get their education. That’s not the case in Bound Brook.”

The state Supreme Court will have the final say on whether Simon, who has been suspended since February 2025, will be permanently removed from the bench.