(Washington) The US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, approved the assignment of a maximum of 600 military lawyers in the Department of Justice to exercise the functions of temporary immigration judges, according to a note consulted by the Associated Press.
The army will begin to send groups of 150 lawyers – soldiers and civilians – to the Department of Justice “as soon as possible”, and military services should have identified the first candidates by next week, according to the note dated August 27.
This initiative comes as the Trump administration attacks immigration across the country, multiplying arrests and expulsions.
Immigration courts have already faced a massive backlog of around 3.5 million files, which has exploded in recent years. However, according to their union, many immigration judges have been dismissed or have voluntarily left their functions after accepting deferred resignations proposed by the administration.
The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a union representing various professional, technical and administrative support workers in North America, said in July that at least 17 immigration judges had been dismissed “without reason” in courts across the country.
There are therefore around 600 immigration judges, according to the union figures, which means that the Pentagon decision will double their workforce.
This decision is made at the request of the Department of Justice. Mr. Hegseth’s note specifies that the terms will initially last more than 179 days, but may be renewable.
Asked about this decision, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice referred questions concerning the project to the Department of Defense. Pentagon officials sent their questions to the White House.
An official of the White House said on Tuesday that the administration was studying various options to absorb the large backwards of immigration files, including the recruitment of additional judges.
The journalists of the Associated Press Will Weissert, Rebecca Santana and Eric Tucker, contributed to this dispatch.
