Trump’s new immigration judges don’t need immigration law experience

For most people — if you don’t like the results, all you can do is hope things turn out better next time. But if you’re President Donald Trump, you can simply change who makes the decisions. After his immigration drive was not moving quickly enough, Trump has now decided to hire immigration judges who have no experience in immigration law.

Contrary to popular assumption, immigration judges are not part of the judiciary branch but rather the executive branch. NBC reports that Trump has been exerting his control over the autonomy of the judges because of this. The judges had previously numbered about 650 individuals with at least 10 years of experience in immigration law. But after Trump decided they were not sufficiently supporting his immigration agenda, he fired about 100 judges, making it increasingly untenable for the courts to keep up with the surge in contentious immigration cases.

Having 10 years’ experience in immigration law was not only desirable for Temporary Immigration Judges (TIJ) in the past but was an actual requirement. Now, a new rule will allow the Trump administration to hire attorneys with no such background. The administration defended this change, saying, “This rule will enable the Director, with the approval of the Attorney General, to staff the immigration courts with a sufficient number of well-trained and highly qualified judges to further reduce and ultimately eliminate the backlog of pending cases.”

The Trump administration has already been flouting previously established immigration policies, such as the Joe Biden directive that prevented people in emergency locations from being subjected to immigration checks. Now, firefighters in Washington who are on the frontlines of community-saving operations are being interrupted by border patrol to check their immigration papers. Concerns are growing about whether Trump is hiring new judges who will be more accommodating to the president’s agenda of ignoring such preestablished immigration policies..

At present, there are about 3.7 million immigration cases still awaiting hearings. During the Trump 2024 Presidential campaign, he claimed he would deport 20 million immigrants. Even at the height of the campaign, The Washington Post warned the Trump administration that such a goal was impossible since there are not even that many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Trump was expected to struggle to fulfill his promise, and now he appears to be targeting U.S. visa holders who are not even in the country, as well as agricultural workers who are vital to the industry.

Trump has anchored his performance as president on how many people he will ultimately deport. So it is no surprise that he is doing everything within his power to ensure as many people as possible are removed as quickly as possible. Whether they will ever meet the expected legal threshold is an entirely different matter.

The Trump administration has argued that removing the regulatory prohibitions for TIJs will help them consider a wider pool of highly qualified candidates. They have already described the immigration issue as “an invasion” that may require suspending due process for the time being, so this change might just be the next step in their agenda.