The Justice Department has begun soliciting judges who are interested in being temporarily reassigned to 12 cities around the country to hear immigration cases from illegal aliens who have been charged with crimes, according to a report published Friday evening.
Interested volunteers would be deployed to cities with the highest population of aliens with criminal charges: New York; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; San Francisco; Baltimore; Bloomington, Minnesota; El Paso, Texas; Harlingen, Texas; Imperial, California; Omaha, Nebraska; and Phoenix, Arizona.
Justice has not announced yet how many judges it plans to send to its most under-staffed cities or how soon the moves could take place. DHS asked DOJ for the reshuffling of the judges.
The move comes six weeks after President Trump took executive action and began following through on a campaign promise to deport every criminal illegal alien. Under policies implemented by former President Barack Obama, the Priority Enforcement Program called for Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to go after illegal immigrants whose records contained serious criminal offenses and ignored those with smaller crimes.
The dozen cities that are slated to receive more support in processing the cases currently have more than 18,000 criminal alien cases pending, according to the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review. The U.S. has a total of 540,000 pending immigration cases, including those who do not have legal presence or lawful status to be in the U.S. and have not committed crimes beyond that offense.
In addition, the Justice Department approved sending additional judges to detention centers along the U.S.-Mexico border in order to immediately process those apprehended by border agents instead of giving individuals future dates to appear about their status in the country after being let loose.
