Hundreds of military and civilian lawyers working for the United States Department of Defense (DOD) will serve as immigration judges temporarily, officials have said, in the latest move by President Donald Trump’s administration to involve the military in US domestic affairs.
“These DOD attorneys will augment existing resources to help further combat a backlog of cases by presiding over immigration hearings,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement on Tuesday.
Military lawyers are not trained to serve as immigration judges, and one US official told the Reuters news agency that even with additional training, it would be difficult for military lawyers to act as judges.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department as part of the plan, according to a memo reviewed by The Associated Press news agency.
The military will begin sending groups of 150 lawyers “as soon as practicable”, according to the memo, with the lawyers expected to serve as immigration judges for 179 days initially, Reuters reported.
The head of the American Immigration Lawyers Association described the plan as similar to having “a cardiologist do a hip replacement”.
“Expecting fair decisions from judges unfamiliar with the law is absurd. This reckless move guts due process and further undermines the integrity of our immigration court system,” said Ben Johnson, the organisation ‘s executive director.
In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, Defense Secretary Hegseth was highly critical of military lawyers, saying that most “spend more time prosecuting our troops than putting away bad guys”.
The move to deploy the military lawyers comes as the Trump administration turns to military support for its crackdown on undocumented immigration, including the growing role of troops patrolling the US-Mexico border, National Guard members being sent into US cities to support immigration enforcement efforts, detaining people at military bases in advance of deportation, and using military aircraft to carry out deportations.
On Tuesday, a court ruled that the Trump administration had “wilfully” violated federal law by sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles in early June.
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