Trump Administration Weighs Having Military Lawyers Work as Immigration Judges

The Trump administration is considering a plan to send about 600 military lawyers to work temporarily as immigration judges, as the White House pushes to increase the rate of deportations, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials.

Moving the lawyers to the Justice Department would bolster the capacity of the immigration system to process a backlog, and insert the military into yet another aspect of domestic life.

As of July, there were nearly 3.8 million pending immigration cases, according to the Justice Department. The plan would also put military officers who have little or no experience with immigration law into roles adjudicating the fates of migrants.

No final decision has been made, and many details remain unclear, according to the current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject. But, they said, the plan has been under development for several weeks, and its basic outlines have started to circulate among the services.

President Trump has increasingly turned to the military to advance his domestic policy priorities. He has deployed troops to the streets of Los Angeles to protect immigration agents from protesters, and to the nation’s capital as part of a broader surge of federal agents assigned to crack down on crime.

Pentagon and Justice Department spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment. But the White House said in a statement that the administration was “looking at a variety of options to help resolve the significant backlog of immigration cases, including hiring additional immigration judges.”