Trump Puts the Open-Borders Lobby on Notice With Record Expansion on Hiring 'Deportation Judges'

The Trump administration just swore in the largest class of immigration judges in American history, and the message to the open-borders crowd is simple: the deportation pipeline is open for business.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that 82 new immigration judges, 77 permanent and five temporary, were sworn in during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., the largest immigration judge class in department history. The corps is back to nearly 700.

Immigration courts have been one of the biggest bottlenecks in President Trump's border push, and for years, that suited the Left just fine. A clogged court system meant delayed deportations, extended stays, and more time for immigration activists and lawyers to run interference. The pending caseload has dropped by nearly half a million since Trump took office, but it's still a long way from cleared.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it plainly in a statement on Thursday:

“Today, we are onboarding the largest immigration judge class in agency history. This could only happen thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership and commitment to securing our borders.”

Immigration judges aren't part of the federal judiciary. They're Justice Department employees, and the executive branch controls the entire apparatus, from the trial courts up through appeals.

The Trump administration fired at least 115 immigration judges over the past year, many of them Biden-era appointees, while a similar number took buyouts, resigned, or retired. The corps dipped below 600 before this class brought it back. The Justice Department has now hired 153 permanent immigration judges in fiscal year 2026 alone, the most ever in a single year. Most come from criminal prosecution, immigration enforcement, or the military. Not exactly judges inclined to rubber-stamp asylum claims.

Watch: Embedded Reporter Gets Front-Row Seat to Wild Scene Involving ICE and Illegals in Florida

Five of the new judges are temporary military hires, serving up to six months under a Pentagon arrangement that puts War Department lawyers - that is, JAG officers - in charge of deciding some deportation cases. That tells you how seriously this administration is treating enforcement.

Immigration lawyers are furious. Greg Chen of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) says the administration is turning immigration judges into "tools of enforcement, not impartial adjudicators." On the broader picture, Chen didn't hold back:

"The courts are not fair or independent in the way we expect them to be but are completely controlled by a President who has stripped them of power and is using them to execute his mass deportation campaign."

The administration has been calling them "deportation judges" in job postings, and asking applicants to "deliver justice" to "criminal illegal aliens." The Left wants immigration courts staffed with advocates. The Biden administration was happy to oblige. Now, Trump 47 is undoing that, and the AILA doesn't like it one bit.

Even with 500,000 cases cleared, more than 3.5 million are still pending. That number won't move without judges to work through them.

More judges mean more hearings. More hearings mean more decisions. More decisions mean more deportations. With midterms approaching and parts of the base frustrated by the administration's focus on Iran, the White House needed a visible win on the issue that got Trump elected twice. This might be it. The Left spent years using a broken court system as a de facto amnesty program. Team Trump is dismantling it, case by case.

Editor’s Note: We voted for mass deportations, not mass amnesty. Help us continue to fight back against those trying to go against the will of the American people.

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