Mek wrote on X:
“Red State Mississippi just appointed America’s first Yemeni Sharia-hijabi judge.”
She went on to attack Ali’s immigration practice and alleged that her professional work was focused on helping immigrants obtain legal status.
Those claims come amid a broader debate over what qualifications and ideological considerations should matter when attorneys are elevated to judicial positions.
Ali is an established Mississippi attorney whose practice is heavily focused on immigration law. Public attorney profiles identify her as the founding attorney of Ali & Associates in Ridgeland. Her firm says it handles immigration matters for clients nationwide, while attorney directories list areas including asylum, deportation defense, citizenship, naturalization, family immigration, adjustment of status and immigration appeals.
Her professional biography also states that she has represented both detained and non-detained clients before immigration courts, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That background has become a central part of the criticism.
Mek also highlighted Ali’s alleged connections to controversial political figures, including former Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. According to Mek, Ali publicly defended Ghalib during the controversy surrounding his nomination to become U.S. ambassador to Kuwait.
Mek wrote:
“She wrote a lengthy public defense the same day (October 23, 2025), calling the exposure of his record “misleading and unethical.””
The Ghalib controversy itself became a major political flashpoint during his nomination battle. Critics pointed to statements and social-media activity that they argued raised serious questions about his suitability for a diplomatic post. His nomination ultimately failed to advance in the Senate.
Mek claims Ali stood behind Ghalib despite those controversies and says that relationship should have received greater attention before Ali was placed on the bench.
She later alleged that Ali removed a Facebook announcement concerning her judicial appointment following RAIR Foundation’s reporting.
Mek wrote on X:
“After RAIR Foundation USA’s massive expose on Assma A. Ali – her appointment as Mississippi’s first Yemeni Sharia-hijabi municipal judge, her career legalizing illegal entrants, and her network of Marxists, Muslim Brotherhood-linked figures, and troubling Islamic supremacists – she has scrubbed her public announcement of the new role. We captured everything and more….
The Facebook post in which she proudly declared she would continue practicing immigration law while serving as a Municipal Court Judge, complete with her photo in the black robe and gavel, has been removed.”
That deletion claim, as well as the reason for any removal, has not been independently established.
There is also a very different account of Ali’s appointment from her supporters.
Debbie Almontaser, founder of Bridging Cultures Group and a longtime friend of Ali, celebrated the appointment as an important achievement for the Yemeni-American community.
She described Ali as the daughter of Yemeni immigrants and praised her years of work representing immigrants. Almontaser argued that Ali’s experience advocating for vulnerable clients would make her a compassionate and effective judge.
She wrote on Facebook:
“I have known Assma Ali for over ten years. And I have never had a single doubt that she was destined for greatness. 🤍✨
Today I am overjoyed to celebrate her appointment as a Municipal Court Judge in the State of Mississippi, making her the first Yemeni American Muslim hijabi woman to become a judge in this country.
Assma is the daughter of Yemeni immigrants who came to this country in the 1970s seeking a better life for their family. She took that dream and built something extraordinary with it. As the founding immigration attorney at her own firm, she has dedicated her career to fighting for the most vulnerable immigrants, the ones who have no voice, no power, and nowhere else to turn. She has traveled across this country representing clients, spoken at major legal conferences, and been recognized as one of the top lawyers in her field.
And now she will carry all of that experience, all of that compassion, and all of that fight onto the bench.
Assma, you have always been a champion for justice. Watching you step into this role fills my heart with so much pride. Our community needed to see this. Our daughters needed to see this. And you delivered.
Congratulations, Judge Assma Ali. This is only the beginning.”
Ali’s professional record is not in dispute: she is a Mississippi-licensed attorney who has practiced immigration law since being admitted to the bar in 2017. Public records list Mississippi College School of Law as her law school and identify immigration as her primary area of practice.
What remains fiercely disputed is what her professional advocacy and political associations should mean for her new judicial role.
For conservatives already concerned about immigration policy, the appointment has become a symbol of a much larger question: should judges with extensive histories representing immigrants and advocating for immigration-related causes be viewed as politically neutral once they take the bench?
Supporters say Ali’s experience gives her a detailed understanding of the legal system and the people who appear before it. Critics counter that judicial appointments require an especially careful examination of an attorney’s public statements, affiliations and political activity.
For now, the controversy surrounding Ali’s appointment is likely to continue. Her supporters see a historic breakthrough and a testament to the American dream. Her critics see a judicial appointment that deserves considerably more scrutiny.
Either way, the debate has placed a previously little-known Mississippi attorney at the center of a national argument over immigration, judicial independence and the direction of conservative politics in red-state America.
