Trump Moves to Double Immigration Judges

President Donald Trump plans to double the Justice Department’s immigration judges. The goal: quickly handle a historic backlog of deportation cases left by former President Joe Biden.

Military Lawyers Step In

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to serve as federal immigration judges.

“The military will begin deploying groups of 150 attorneys—both military and civilian—to the Justice Department as soon as possible,” the AP reported. According to an August 27 memo, the first round of personnel should be identified by next week.

Current Judge Numbers and Trump Administration Action

Currently, roughly 600 immigration judges serve in the U.S. Trump’s team is removing judges who were considered too lenient in granting immigration benefits, such as asylum.

The Biden Backlog

The Biden administration left an unprecedented 3.5 million immigration cases. For context:

• When Trump took office in January 2017, the backlog was under 570,000 cases.

• By early 2021, it had grown to over one million cases.

Biden officials also implemented a “quiet amnesty,” administratively closing cases for many migrants facing deportation. This allowed them to remain in the U.S. indefinitely.

Limiting Administrative Closures

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow told Breitbart News that the Trump administration is actively limiting these administrative closures. “Anything the Biden administration could do to secure a larger foothold from an illegal population, they would do,” Edlow said. He suggested that Biden’s long-term plan may have aimed at granting mass amnesty and spreading migrants to shift demographics across the country.