The Trump administration announced a record-high increase in immigration judges on Thursday to speed up its deportation efforts.
Seventy-seven permanent immigration judges and five temporary ones were sworn in Wednesday, the largest class in the history of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the Department of Justice (DOJ) said. Immigration judges decide deportation cases and are crucial to President Donald Trump’s goal of reducing a backlog.
.@DOJ_EOIR Announces 77 Immigration Judges and 5 Temporary Immigration Judges: LARGEST CLASS IN AGENCY’S HISTORY
“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… pic.twitter.com/JRSIMZuNiF
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) May 21, 2026
“Today, we are onboarding the largest immigration judge class in agency history,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “This could only happen thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership and commitment to securing our borders. I also applaud EOIR’s leadership team for helping facilitate these hiring efforts and recruiting highly qualified and talented personnel in record time.”
The new class is part of 153 total permanent judges the EOIR appointed this fiscal year, the most the office has ever appointed in that time frame, according to the DOJ.
For asylum-related immigration cases alone, the backlog under the Biden administration’s lax border policies hit 2.5 million in fiscal year 2023 and a record high of 4 million by January 2025, according to the DOJ. The Trump administration began making progress in 2025 by putting military lawyers on immigration courts, leading to higher deportation rates, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported. The DOJ has shrunk the caseload from about 4 million to under 3.53 million, according to Thursday’s announcement.
“Reducing the immigration court backlog remains one of the highest priorities for the [EOIR],” the DOJ said.
Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is on track to deport more than 85,000 with judges’ deportation orders by the end of fiscal year 2026, a DCNF investigation showed. The cases comprise a small portion of the more than 675,000 removals the Trump administration has taken credit for, which also include turnarounds at the U.S. border and self-deportations.
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