MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Pentagon is calling on military lawyers to serve as temporary judges in immigration courts. The move comes during what was already a shortage of immigration judges to face a huge backlog of immigration cases but, also, as the Trump administration has been dismissing immigration judges, often without telling them why, and as the administration is looking to speed up the deportation of undocumented immigrants. NPR's immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo has been following this. She's with us now. Good morning.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So what can you tell us about what the Pentagon is planning?
BUSTILLO: Up to 600 military lawyers have been authorized to do this, 150 potentially starting as soon as this week. That's according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. I did also confirm that last night, some individuals have already received emails calling for volunteers. The move comes after the Justice Department last week effectively lowered the requirements for who could be a temporary immigration judge. The requirement they removed was needing to have prior immigration experience. Florida actually floated a plan earlier this summer to deputize its own JAGs, also known as Judge Advocate General Corps, to act as immigration judges. And at the time, President Trump approved of this idea.
MARTIN: What's the reasoning behind this?
BUSTILLO: The Trump administration does want to increase the rate of deportations, right? And immigration judges stand between an arrest and the administration putting some immigrants on a plane out of the U.S. There are - they are some of the only ones that can revoke someone's green card or issue a final order for removal, but they're also really busy. In fact, there's a very large backlog within the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is what oversees immigration courts. Now, at the same time, as you mentioned, EOIR has lost over 100 judges. Some have been fired. Others have left. And so adding these JAGs could sharply increase the workforce and streamline the reviews of cases.
MARTIN: And so what does this move tell us about the administration's approach to immigration policy?
BUSTILLO: You know, the news this week on the military lawyers really underlines how there is a really big focus on enforcement when it comes to the Trump administration. We haven't seen the same massive recruitment effort out of the Justice Department to bring on additional immigration lawyers that we have seen out of the Department of Homeland Security to bolster its own workforce. You might recall that earlier this year, Congress approved millions in funding for both Homeland Security and DOJ to bring on more people to facilitate this mass deportation effort. But we haven't seen as big of a nationwide push to bring on immigration judges. Instead, they're opting to borrow personnel from yet a third agency, the Defense Department.
Now, since this idea was floated at the local level in Florida, there has been a general concern from immigration rights and the military community about the use of JAGs as immigration judges. Now, to be clear, a person does not have to be an immigration attorney or have worked within immigration enforcement to be an immigration judge. But the union who represents immigration judges says that having people who lack experience serving on this type of bench then serving on a temporary assignment basis may lead to a slew of other issues, such as slower decisions and an increase in appeals that could further backlog the system.
MARTIN: I think - is there any training being offered to these people who are going to be volunteering for this?
BUSTILLO: So we are told that they will get about two weeks' worth of training very quickly. But again, this appears to be a temporary basis, so there's a lot of questions to be had.
MARTIN: That is NPR immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo. Ximena, thank you.
BUSTILLO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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