Esther Salas

In 2006, Salas was selected from a group of 99 applicants as United States magistrate judge for the District of New Jersey, becoming the first Latina in that position,[2] in which she served for five years.[1] On August 31, 2010, Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez announced they would recommend to President Barack Obama that Salas be nominated as a federal district judge on the same court.[6] Obama nominated her on December 1, 2010, to a seat vacated by Katharine Sweeney Hayden who assumed senior status on May 30, 2010.[4] The American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which rates the qualifications of federal judicial nominees, unanimously rated Salas "well qualified" for the judgeship (the committee's highest rating).[7] The nomination expired without Senate action at the end of the 111th Congress.[8] Obama renominated Salas on January 5, 2011, at the beginning of the 112th Congress, and the Senate confirmed her by voice vote on June 14, 2011 and she received her commission the same day,[9] making her the first Latina on the District Court of New Jersey.[1][5][10][11]

The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey has a busy docket; according to a 2018 profile, Salas "presides over as many as 485 civil matters and 50 criminal cases" at any given time.[3]

• In 2013, Salas presided over a criminal case against the former chief information technology officer for the office of Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey. The administrator pleaded guilty to hacking into Zimmer's email account to disclose her emails, and the emails of others, to other persons within Hoboken City Hall.[12] Salas sentenced the man to five years' probation.[13]
• Salas was the judge responsible for the trial of Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice and her husband, Giuseppe "Joe" Giudice. Both were sentenced for bank fraud on October 2, 2014.[14]
• In 2018, Salas issued an order temporarily blocking U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from deporting certain Indonesian Christians in New Jersey who were present without authorization in the U.S. and were subject to orders of removal, but were seeking legal status. The order dealt with about 50 Christians who had fled persecution in Indonesia and had lived in New Jersey for many years before being targeted by immigration enforcement actions.[15]
• In 2018, Salas sentenced Farad Roland, a leader of the Newark "South Side Cartel" set of the Bloods street gang, to 45 years in prison for his role in a series of crimes from 2003 to 2010, including five fatal shootings, a carjacking and drug dealing.[16] The sentence accepted a plea agreement reached between the defendant and federal prosecutors.[16] Salas had earlier ruled that Roland's intellectual disability made him ineligible to be sentenced to death under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and under the Federal Death Penalty Act.[17]
• Salas is the judge presiding over the class-action lawsuit against Deutsche Bank (Karimi v. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft et al.), which alleges that Deutsche Bank had poor financial reporting practices and made misleading statements to securities investors, resulting from Deutsche Bank's desire to obscure its anti-money laundering deficiencies and its poor monitoring of high-risk customers such as Jeffrey Epstein, Danske Bank in Estonia, and FBME Bank.[18][19]

On July 19, 2020, an assailant targeted Salas' family at their home. Daniel, aged 20, opened the door when the assailant knocked. The assailant then opened fire, killing Daniel at the scene. Mark was also shot multiple times and left in a critical but stable condition.[22][23][24] Salas was in the basement at the time of the attack and was not injured. The Federal Bureau of Investigation led the investigation into the attack on Salas' family home in conjunction with the U.S. Marshals Service and local law enforcement.[20]

The following day, the FBI identified 72-year-old attorney Roy Den Hollander as the primary suspect; Den Hollander was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the town of Rockland in upstate New York.[20][25][26] Den Hollander was a self-described antifeminist previously known for filing unsuccessful lawsuits against "ladies night" promotions at bars and nightclubs, as well as suing Columbia University for offering women's studies classes.[20][27] Den Hollander had appeared before Salas in connection with a lawsuit he brought challenging the military's male-only draft.[25][28] In various writings, Den Hollander ranted about his hatred of women, used racist and sexist terms to disparage Salas, and spoke of his personal grievances.[26] Den Hollander described himself as a "men's rights" activist but was ejected from the National Coalition for Men and is also a suspect in the shooting death of a men's rights lawyer Marc Angelucci at his home in Crestline, California, earlier the same month.[29]

Salas was interviewed for a 60 Minutes report in February 2021 about this attack, in which 60 Minutes also revealed the discovery of the gunman's planning for an attack on Justice Sonia Sotomayor.[30]

The shooting led to the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act of 2021, endorsed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on December 12 of that year.[31][32]