In the Biden-administration “open borders” mythology MAGA folks have created, the “Democrat” federal government eagerly invited millions of bad people across the border, then released most of them from custody with only the semblance of a hearing, pleading judicial overload. Now that the Trump administration has committed to getting rid of as many of these people as possible as quickly as possible, you’d figure Republicans would massively increase the resources available for judicial review of immigration cases — particularly since the recently enacted Trump megabill dumps $170 billion into immigration enforcement. But you’d be wrong.
The number of federal immigration judges has actually dropped from 700 to around 600 in 2025 with the administration aggressively firing some of them despite a total case backlog of 3.7 million. While you can find “immigration judges” in the fine print of the megabill, the category shares $3.3 billion in funding with “prosecutions of noncitizens, compensating local governments for incarcerating noncitizens and combating drug trafficking.” Meanwhile, $45 billion goes to “detention capacity expansion’ and another $29.9 billion to “enforcement and removal, including hiring ICE agents, transportation costs, and detaining families.” So, clearly, adjudicating immigration cases is an extremely low priority for this immigration-obsessed administration and its congressional allies.
Now we know why: Team Trump wants to jail, not judge, undocumented immigrants, as the Washington Post reports:
The Trump administration has declared that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
In a July 8 memo, Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told officers that such immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years. Lawyers say the policy will apply to millions of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few decades, including under the Biden administration.
Up until now, immigrants have generally had bond hearings to determine if there’s any particular reason to incarcerate them. This would seem an especially good idea now that the federal government has decided to arrest many millions of undocumented immigrants who have been living and working peacefully in this country for years if not decades. But no:
Lyons wrote that the Trump administration’s departments of Homeland Security and Justice had “revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities” and determined that such immigrants “may not be released from ICE custody.” In rare exceptions immigrants may be released on parole, but that decision will be up to an immigration officer, not a judge, he wrote …
Forcing them to remain in detention facilities often in far-flung areas such as an alligator-infested swamp in Florida or the Arizona desert would make it more difficult to fight their cases, because they will be unable to work or easily communicate with family members and lawyers to prepare their cases.
No wonder the administration is so frantic to build new ICE detention centers. People are going to be warehoused without judicial review until they’re somewhere other than the United States.
This new policy will be challenged in federal courts, where the administration has done relatively well in defending unprecedented immigration policies, particularly when cases get to the 47th president’s good friends on the Supreme Court. But the underlying philosophy won’t change. This administration has no interest in streamlining the administration of immigration laws to make the system fairer and more efficient. All that matters is meeting Trump’s goal of a million deportations this calendar year. Anything that gets in the way, including simple decency, is going out the window.