The Daily Fuckup

The Justice Department is leaning harder on immigration judges to work through cases faster while the immigration court system still carries a heavy caseload. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the administration wants a corps that will help clear the backlog and apply immigration law as the administration interprets it. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/eoir-announces-77-immigration-judges-and-5-temporary-immigration-judges))

The agency paired that message with a staffing announcement on May 21. EOIR said it swore in 77 immigration judges and 5 temporary immigration judges, described the group as the largest class of new adjudicators in the agency’s history, and said the total immigration judge corps had grown to nearly 700. The same release said EOIR had hired 153 permanent immigration judges in the current fiscal year and had completed more than 1.08 million cases since Jan. 20, 2025, while reducing its pending immigration-court caseload by more than 447,000 cases. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/eoir-announces-77-immigration-judges-and-5-temporary-immigration-judges))

The administration’s message is straightforward: hire more judges, move more cases, and cut the wait. But the pressure on the courts remains part of a broader fight over how much control the executive branch should exert over immigration adjudication and how much time a case deserves before a judge rules on it. The official numbers show the system is still absorbing a massive volume of filings even after the recent hiring push. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/eoir-announces-77-immigration-judges-and-5-temporary-immigration-judges))

On May 26, the Supreme Court issued a procedural ruling in a separate case involving a policy that requires immigration judges to get supervisory approval before making public statements related to their official duties. The Court reversed a lower-court ruling on party-presentation grounds and sent the case back for further proceedings; it did not decide the underlying legality of the speech policy. ([supreme.justia.com](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/608/25-767/))