Courts Purged, Pace Up
A New York Times investigation says the administration reshaped immigration courts by pressuring or purging judges, producing faster deportation orders. The reporting says more than 100 judges were fired or forced out and replaced with DHS prosecutors and military lawyers, and EOIR staffing moves—like a Montana attorney appointed as a temporary judge in Portland—fit a broader throughput-first pattern ( ).
The judges deciding whether people stay in the United States or get deported were themselves pushed out at scale. A New York Times investigation says more than 100 immigration judges were fired or forced out, and many were replaced by Department of Homeland Security prosecutors and military lawyers. (nytimes.com, independent.co.uk) Several former judges told the Times they were warned to move cases faster and faced disciplinary threats if they did not keep up. The Independent, citing the same reporting, says judges described a system aimed at deporting as many people as possible as quickly as possible. (nytimes.com, independent.co.uk) These are not courts in the usual federal-judge sense. Immigration judges work inside the Department of Justice, and the attorney general has complete discretion over who gets appointed, including temporary 24-month appointments while a background check is still pending. (justice.gov, crsreports.congress.gov) That structure has always made the system vulnerable to politics. The American Bar Association has spent years arguing for an independent immigration court because the current setup leaves judges under the control of the same executive branch that is trying to deport people. (americanbar.org, abajournal.com) The pressure landed on a system that was already enormous. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data shows more than 3.3 million pending immigration court cases through February 2026, after the backlog had already become one of the largest in the country’s administrative courts. (tracreports.org, justice.gov) The administration has been explicit that speed is the goal. The Executive Office for Immigration Review said in September 2025 that reducing the backlog was one of its highest priorities, and a White House release on April 9, 2026 said hundreds of thousands of cases had been cleared since Inauguration Day. (justice.gov, whitehouse.gov) Hiring shows how that push works in practice. The Justice Department announced new slates of permanent and temporary judges in 2025 and 2026, and the Times reports that many of the replacements came from immigration prosecution jobs or military legal roles rather than from the defense side of the system. (justice.gov, justice.gov, nytimes.com) One small appointment in Oregon fits that larger pattern. NBC Montana reported on April 9 that Ryan J. Clark, a Montana attorney who had worked with the Social Security Administration’s hearings office in Billings from 2015 to 2026, was appointed as a temporary immigration judge in Portland. (nbcmontana.com) The agency said Clark and other new judges had completed training and would be sent to courts in multiple states to help with backlog reduction. In other words, the bench is being staffed like a surge workforce, with temporary appointments used to move cases through crowded courtrooms faster. (nbcmontana.com, justice.gov) The fight is over what “faster” means. Supporters point to falling backlog numbers and more completed cases, while former judges told the Times that speed came with pressure to deny time, cut hearings short, and turn a court into an assembly line. (justice.gov, nytimes.com, independent.co.uk) That is why this story is bigger than a staffing dispute. When the government can replace judges, shorten the line, and celebrate the higher output at the same time, the number that rises fastest is deportation orders. (nytimes.com, whitehouse.gov, tracreports.org)
