Fewer Hearings, More Deportations: The Striking Paradox in Trump’s War on Immigration

Image Credit: https://www.reuters.com/pictures/trump-deports-alleged-venezuelan-gang-members-el-salvador-prison-2025-03-18/I4FMUWRUYRFDDBPYMAWXTIUUZI/

President Trump campaigned on a promise to hire more judges in the administrative immigration court system to address a growing backlog of 3.7 million cases, a plan supported by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Despite this pledge, as of March 6th, the Trump administration has fired 29 immigration judges. 18 others have recently accepted retirement packages and resignation offers. 

The group of 29 immigration judges fired from the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review includes the office’s top officials: Mary Cheng, the acting director of the U.S. immigration court system; Sheila McNulty, the chief immigration judge; Lauren Alder Reid, the head of agency policy; and Jill Anderson, the general counsel. The Trump administration has also fired judges on the Board of Immigration Appeals. Last month, the Justice Department issued a memo suggesting that more job cuts could be coming. These large cuts come as the Trump administration continues to carry out mass firings across the federal government, signaling a desire to majorly restructure the immigration court system.

Immigration judges play an essential role in the immigration system, deciding asylum claims and ordering the deportation of foreign residents who do not qualify. Each of the more than 700 immigration judges under the Justice Department handles between 500 and 700 cases per year. Finding, hiring, training, and vetting qualified judges to fill vacancies is difficult given the specialized nature of the immigration court system as separate from the judicial department. The new vacancies in the Justice Department’s immigration courts will thus further exacerbate the backlog of immigration cases in the United States.

According to estimates from 2023, the average wait for asylum claim decisions in the United States is three years. It is an average of 10 years if the person files an application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Immigration court is typically used by immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally, while U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services normally handle cases of immigrants who initially enter the U.S. legally, such as through a visitor’s visa. As cases take time to make it to court, many undocumented immigrants put down roots in local communities, which can complicate efforts to remove them if a deportation order is ultimately issued.

While the Trump administration continues to drain the Justice Department’s immigration courts—the normal avenues by which deportation orders are made—of its staff and resources, it has also been looking for other means to deport large groups of undocumented immigrants quickly, publicly, and without a hearing.

On one hand, at the U.S.-Mexico border, early federal data indicate that Trump’s escalated immigration policy has proven effective: border crossings are at a historic low, and officials at the border were on track to arrest 8,500 migrants in February 2025—a record low when compared to data over the last 25 years.

On the other hand, the administration has made nearly 23,000 arrests and 18,000 deportations last month, up significantly compared to the Biden administration. Despite the low number of arrests at the border, the number of people booked into ICE detention elsewhere in the country has filled facilities above the funding capacity set by Congress. To address a shortage of beds, the Trump administration has readied two additional facilities in Texas to detain families of immigrants and is considering reopening military sites across the country for the same purpose. The percentage of detained people with no criminal charges has grown from six percent in mid-January to 16 percent of all people detained.

The White House has expressed frustration that, despite a high rate of arrests, the rate of deportations remains below President Trump’s target of deporting up to 20 million undocumented immigrants this year (despite estimates suggesting there are between 11 and 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country). However, instead of turning to the courts to increase resources for asylum hearings, the administration has fired dozens of immigration judges. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have proposed billions more in funding for ICE, as the president continues to expand the use of wartime resources and the military’s role in immigration enforcement.

Controversially, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—a law only meant to be used during wartime—to deport more than 250 mainly Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador, despite a judge’s order. Originally passed to prepare for what Congress believed would be an impending war with France, the Alien Enemies Act has been used only three times in U.S. history: during the War of 1812, World War I, and, most recently, to intern and remove tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. The Act allows the president to detain and deport immigrants based on their country of origin during wartime.

By invoking the Alien Enemies Act and characterizing migration as an invasion of “foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to US soil” in his inaugural address, President Trump has forged a new avenue for the mass deportation of noncitizens in the U.S. that circumvents traditional legal procedure in immigration court.

The cases of more than 250 migrants allegedly associated with terrorist crime organizations, including the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the Salvadoran gang MS-13, and the Mexican-American gang 18th St., have been handled under wartime authority rather than immigration law by the Department of Homeland Security. Each alleged gang member was shackled and put on a plane to El Salvador without any formal review to determine whether they qualified as an alien enemy.

President Trump’s invocation of this eighteenth-century law has effectively stripped immigrants of their procedural rights to hearings in immigration court and due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Fifth Amendment guarantees due process to “all persons” in the U.S., not only citizens. Administration officials have also suggested that the 1798 Alien Enemies Act permits federal agents to enter the homes of immigrants without a warrant, undermining fundamental protections of the Fourth Amendment. ICE officers have historically needed a warrant signed by a federal judge to enter such homes without permission.

In light of this administration’s apparent disregard for judicial authority, Judge James E. Boasberg, who first ordered the flights of the migrants to El Salvador to halt and return to the United States, issued another order demanding an explanation for why Trump administration officials allowed two flights to continue to the prison. In response, President Trump publicly demanded that Judge Boasberg be impeached, prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a statement reminding the president that the appeals process, not impeachment, is the appropriate avenue to respond to unfavorable rulings.

In his pursuit of a faster and more punitive response to immigration, President Trump’s disregard for federal judges’ orders and readiness to dismiss immigration judges raises a greater uncertainty: will President Trump seek to do away with the immigration court asylum process altogether?

Cate Gutowski is a sophomore at Brown University studying English and Political Science. She is a staff writer for the Brown Undergraduate Law Review and can be contacted at catherine_gutowski@brown.edu.

Maia Eng is a junior at Brown University studying English and Political Science. She is a blog editor for the Brown Undergraduate Law Review and can be contacted at maia_lourdes_eng@brown.edu.