PHILADELPHIA - One U.S. immigration judge is off the bench and others could follow in the wake of blistering federal court rebukes about the treatment of asylum seekers.

Donald V. Ferlise has been replaced on the court calendar in Philadelphia while the U.S. attorney general conducts a nationwide review of immigration judges, who decide who can stay in the United States to avoid turmoil in their homelands.

Several of the judges have been the subjects of angry appellate court rulings. In Ferlise's case, the increasingly strident 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took aim at his demeanor.

"Yet once again, under the 'bullying' nature of the immigration judge's questioning, a petitioner was ground to bits," U.S. Circuit Judge Maryanne Trump Barry wrote in a ruling this spring.

In rulings that were overturned in recent years, Ferlise denied asylum to the nephew of a deposed Gambian president, to a Pakistani woman whose father was killed in sectarian violence and to a young Ghanian woman who said her priest-father held her as a sex slave.

Ferlise denied even the formality of a hearing for a Jordanian college student who failed to register under a post-Sept. 11, 2001, program for men from mostly Muslim countries, saying he had already decided the case.

Ferlise, 62, did not return calls to his home and Philadelphia office this week. His lawyer, Ralph Conte, said Ferlise remains employed by the Executive Office of Immigration Review.

Local immigration lawyers say Ferlise stopped hearing cases a few weeks ago.

William Stock, who heads the Philadelphia chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said Ferlise was "deeply untrusting" of testimony from asylum-seekers.

"He had a very hard time finding a lot of people credible," Stock said. "I think, too, a lot of his decisions seemed to reflect that he had a very limited experience of the world."

The Justice Department supervises about 215 immigration judges around the country who oversee the nation's teeming immigration courts. The department called Ferlise's job status a personnel matter and would not say if he will return to the bench. The Executive Office of Immigration Review also declined to say if other judges have been disciplined since Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began a review this year.

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