The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it swore in a record number of new immigration judges, as the Trump administration seeks to deport a historic number of illegal immigrants.The Executive Office for Immigration Review said over 80 judges were onboarded, marking the largest immigration judge class in the office’s history. The move will enable deportation cases to move faster through the system, allowing Washington to fast-track its immigration agenda, after White House border czar Tom Homan revealed earlier this week that a record 800,000 illegal immigrants have already been removed from the United States.“The Trump administration is committed to reestablishing an immigration judge corps that is dedicated to restoring the rule to the law in our nation’s immigration system,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement hailing President Donald Trump’s actions on immigration reform. “This could only happen thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership and commitment to securing our borders.”
Severe backlog in immigration courts remains a key impediment to Trump’s deportation agenda.
“With nearly 3.8 million pending deportation cases as of mid-2025, delays in the courts hamper core functions of the broader U.S. immigration system—including leaving individuals who are in need of protection waiting years for a decision in their asylum case, while those who are ineligible are not ordered removed in a timely manner,” Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, wrote in a brief last November.
