President Donald Trump’s use of military lawyers as immigration judges appears to be helping boost his mass deportation goals.
Ever since the Trump administration amended official policy in 2025, which allows military personnel to act as temporary immigration judges, illegal migrants have been ordered deported or pushed into voluntary departure at higher rates, according to newly released data. These judges could prove to be major players as the president follows through on a pledge to conduct the largest deportation operation in U.S history.
Military lawyers, also known as judge advocate generals (JAGs), issued deportation orders in 78% of cases throughout November, the first full month JAG judges began issuing rulings, according to information provided by Mobile Pathways, a California-based nonprofit organization that advocates for migrants. This rate was notably higher than the roughly 62% rate of removal orders handed down by regular immigration judges during the same time period.
December data also showed the trend continued, with 95% of cases heard by a JAG judge ending in departure or removal orders, according to Mobile Pathways. During the final month of 2025, roughly 54% of foreigners who appeared before a JAG judge were ordered removed, while another 41% ended their case in voluntary departure.
In general, foreign nationals are roughly 1.5x less likely to receive relief before a JAG judge.
Border hawks, including those who have previously served as immigration judges themselves, have welcomed the tougher rulings.
“It is highly likely that the temporary Immigration Judges seconded from the armed forces have lower approval rates because they aren’t pursuing an ideological agenda, they’re simply reading the relevant statutes and applying them to the facts of their cases in the manner intended by Congress,” Matt O’Brien, deputy executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“And that clearly demonstrates that the Trump Administration is justified in removing career IJs [immigration judges] whose inordinately high approval rates indicate that they are deciding cases on the basis of their ideological preferences rather than on the basis of what the law actually says,” O’Brien stated.
O’Brien is familiar with the role; he began serving as an immigration judge in 2020 before he was fired under the Biden administration, an action he decried as politically motivated. The ousted judge, who had quickly established a high removal record, was beset with repeated motions against him, a situation he said only got worse when President Joe Biden entered the White House.
The dawn of the second Trump administration brought on more changes as to who is qualified to issue deportation orders.
The Department of Justice (DOJ), which oversees the immigration court system, made policy reforms as to who could qualify as a temporary immigration judge, according to an August memo posted on the federal register. The Trump administration began tapping military lawyers in October to serve in temporary positions and the Pentagon has since authorized hundreds of military lawyers to work for the DOJ.
The move could help a an immigration system drowning in cases. The backlog of asylum cases reached 2.5 million at the end of fiscal year 2023 and ballooned to a record-setting four million cases by January 2025, according to the Trump administration.
The use of military judges — who are able to serve for six months at a time, with continuing extensions — is so far bolstering an administration that is prioritizing immigration enforcement.
Trump declared an emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border as soon as he returned to the Oval Office, a move that allowed more federal resources, including the military, to be diverted to the region. The president further bankrolled border security by threatening Mexico with crippling tariffs unless its government took more action, forcing Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to deploy thousands of her own troops to the region.
As the southern border experiences historically low unlawful crossings, the Trump administration has focused attention and resources on the interior of the country. The Department of Homeland Security has since deployed enforcement surges to several major cities, such as Los Angeles and Minneapolis, nabbing criminal migrants with deportation orders.
The administration’s efforts to conduct large-scale immigration enforcement operations have been met with legal challenges from Democrats and others opposed to the president’s agenda. Local leaders in Minnesota and Minneapolis are currently suing to remove Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents out of the state, and a federal judge in December ruled the National Guard troops deployed in Los Angeles had to leave.
“In President Trump’s first year back in office, nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a public statement on Jan. 20.
Currently policy is a far cry from the Biden administration, which had abruptly dismantled the immigration enforcement apparatus established during Trump’s first term and ignited a border crisis never experienced in American history. There were ultimately 8.5 million migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border throughout the four fiscal years Biden occupied the Oval Office.
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