The Justice Department on Tuesday appointed a new head of its immigration court system a retired Marine Corps colonel who was fired from a command position as head of security at Marine Base Quantico for negligently firing a gun into the floor of his office.
The colonel, Daren K. Margolin, who served as a military lawyer in various roles in the Marine Corps, began working for the first Trump administration after retiring from military service, according to a Justice Department biography. In June 2020, the Trump-era Justice Department appointed Colonel Margolin as an assistant chief immigration judge, and he served in that role until 2024.
In 2013, Colonel Margolin, who had been serving as commanding officer of Quantico’s Security Battalion, was removed from command after negligently discharging a personal firearm, according to news reports at the time. Base rules at Quantico barred Marines from carrying personal weapons on its grounds, and Colonel Margolin, as the base’s head of security, was in charge of enforcing the weapons ban.
Maj. Gen. Juan Ayala, then in charge of oversight for Marine bases, said that he had removed Colonel Margolin because he had lost confidence in his ability to command.
Colonel Margolin will now head the Executive Office for Immigration Review in the Justice Department, effectively overseeing the entire U.S. immigration court system, which reviews asylum requests for migrants and issues deportation orders. Immigration courts are part of the executive branch, and their judges are employees of Colonel Margolin’s office.
President Trump had purged top level officials from the immigration office immediately after taking office, including the previous acting head of the office and the chief immigration judge.
As Mr. Trump carries out a mass deportation campaign, a substantial backlog of immigration cases has hindered that effort. As of July, there were nearly 3.8 million pending immigration cases, and Mr. Trump has often complained that offering due process to every undocumented migrant in the country through the immigration courts will thwart his plans for mass deportation.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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