Trump's DOJ Can Now Make Any Lawyer an Immigration Judge
Pam Bondi just gave herself the power to pluck attorneys from anywhere — no immigration experience required — to speed deportations. Advocates warn it’s about stacking the courts, not clearing the bac
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday finalized a rule giving Attorney General Pam Bondi sweeping new authority to appoint virtually any attorney to serve as a temporary immigration judge — a sharp break from longstanding requirements designed to ensure expertise on the immigration bench.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the DOJ agency that oversees the nation’s immigration courts, announced the change on Wednesday in a final rule scheduled for publication in the Federal Register the following day.
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A Major Expansion of Authority
Under the rule, EOIR’s director, with Bondi’s approval, can “designate or select any attorney to serve as a temporary immigration judge” for six-month renewable terms. That means the department can bypass earlier restrictions limiting temporary appointments to former immigration judges, certain administrative law judges, or Justice Department attorneys with at least a decade of immigration law experience.
The department argued those restrictions were “needlessly narrow” and hampered efforts to manage an immigration court backlog that peaked at more than 4 million cases earlier this year.
“Immigration law experience is not always a strong predictor of success as an IJ,” EOIR wrote in the rule, pointing to permanent judges hired without prior immigration law backgrounds who it says went on to become “exemplary” jurists.
Critics Warn of Politicization
The move has alarmed immigration advocates, who warn that it risks turning the courts into political instruments of the Trump administration’s mass deportation push.
“There is an attempt here to more quickly address the backlog of the immigration court and prioritize speed over justice,” Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, told GovExec. He cautioned that temporary judges, subject to renewal every six months, would feel “an added incentive to ensure they are meeting the expectations of leadership.”
The DOJ dismissed such concerns in the rule, calling accusations that new hires would not be neutral arbiters “unsupported”.
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Court System Under Strain
The administration is framing the rule as a pragmatic response to a crisis. Even after Congress authorized EOIR to hire up to 800 permanent judges by 2028, the agency says the backlog is too large to be resolved through traditional hiring alone.
Still, critics note that DOJ itself has worsened the staffing crunch by firing dozens of judges or pressuring them to leave since Trump returned to office.
Terminology Rollback
The final rule also rescinds several changes made under the Biden administration, striking the terms “noncitizen” and “unaccompanied child” from DOJ regulations and restoring the statutory language of “alien” and “unaccompanied alien child”. The department said the newer terms created confusion and were inconsistent with congressional usage.
The Bigger Picture
For Trump and Bondi, the new authority could accelerate deportation cases at a moment when the White House is leaning heavily on mass removal as a signature policy. With the backlog still hovering near record highs, immigration advocates see the rule as less about efficiency and more about consolidating executive power over who decides the fate of migrants in the United States.
“This is about control,” said one immigration lawyer who reviewed the rule. “If you can put any lawyer you want on the bench, you can stack the courts with people who will deliver the outcomes you want.”
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There are a lot of disgraced former Trump Admin attorneys who need the work.
I’m sure justice will prevail from these sewer rats.