The Trump administration is looking to hire thousands of federal law enforcement personnel, as part of expanded immigration enforcement efforts.

But the courts handling these cases aren’t seeing the same surge in resources. Several immigration judges recently fired by the Justice Department say the court system is losing staff, and is unable to address a multi-million case backlog.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has intensified operations across the country, and detention facilities are full of individuals waiting for their cases to be heard.

The One Big, Beautiful Bill Act passed this summer gave the Department of Homeland Security billions of dollars to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, as well as 5,000 customs officers and 3,000 Border Patrol agents.

The legislation bill also authorized DOJ to hire about 100 new immigration judges, bringing their total headcount to about 800 nationwide.

But the total number of immigration judges is dwindling under the Trump administration, according to data tracked by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and its affiliate, the National Association of Immigration Judges.

According to the unions, the total number of immigration judges this year has dropped from 700 to 600. The Trump administration terminated more than 80 immigration judges since taking office, while others have retired or accepted voluntary separation incentives.

Recently terminated immigration judges say their colleagues still on the job don’t have the resources needed to address a backlog of about 3.4 million cases.

Before he was fired in September, Ted Doolittle, a former immigration judge at the immigration court in Hartford, Connecticut, was one of two judges handling about 46,000 cases.

Doolittle said he received his termination email one afternoon, as he was preparing for a docket of 57 cases the next day.

“The caseload is crushing. I think it’s probably one of the most overburdened court systems,” Doolittle said Thursday at an event at the National Press Club.

In order for the Justice Department to meaningfully address the backlog, Doolittle said the department needs about 2,000 or 3,000 immigration judges — not the few hundred currently working.

“That’s what’s going away, is the right of these people to have their cases heard fairly,” he said.

Emmett Soper, a former immigration judge in Virginia, who was fired in August after serving nine years on the job, said the widespread terminations are leading to a “chaotic situation,” where courts are scrambling to reassign cases to remaining judges.

“Each immigration judge is responsible for hundreds or thousands of these cases, and every time the administration unlawfully fires an immigration judge, they’re no longer there. Their cases have to be redistributed to the judges who remain at the court,” Soper said. “This is not a fair way to run a court system.”

Anam Petit, former immigration judge in Virginia, who was fired in September, said judges are hearing, at a minimum, 25 cases a day — sometimes 50 or more cases — in multiple languages.

“You can have a docket with five different languages,” she said.

Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said that the “lion’s share” of firings have been targeted at immigration judges who were hired during the Biden administration.

“Immigrants in this country are entitled to due process, and by firing these judges, you’re denying them their due process,” Biggs said.

To address the backlog, DOJ is training hundreds of military lawyers to temporarily serve as immigration judges. But Biggs said most of these don’t have a background in immigration law.

“We appreciate their service to our nation, and it’s no disrespect to them, but they should not be in these positions,” he said.

Federal News Network reached out to DOJ and DHS for comment.

The former judges said defendants are also failing to show up for court dates this year, because they are afraid of being detained by ICE agents afterward. Petit said that it was a “daily occurrence” for defendants in her courtroom.

“It has a huge chilling effect,” she said. “People are afraid to come to court because they’re seeing people get detained in the hallways.”

Defendants who don’t appear for their court date automatically receive a removal order, and have no legal avenue to appeal that decision.

Doolittle said ICE agents prefer making arrests in courthouses, because individuals have gone through security and been screened for weapons. He recalled that toward the end of his tenure, ICE agents repeatedly tased a suspect in the court’s lobby before bringing him into custody.

“Many of the court staff lost sleep — like physically, weren’t able to sleep for a period afterwards. And of course, it makes them question whether that’s a job they want to continue,” he said.

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