Pentagon Plans for 600 Military Lawyers to Backfill Immigration Judges

The Washington Post

17:22 JST, September 3, 2025

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has tasked the branches of the armed services with finding up to 600 military lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges in response to a request for assistance from the Department of Homeland Security, two people familiar with the request told The Washington Post.

The Pentagon is looking to identify military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, or JAGs, across active-duty services, the National Guard and the reserves to step in as judges to support immigration or law enforcement court proceedings. The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration is already filling some court dockets, and both the military and the Department of Homeland Security are looking for ways to support expanded operations in Chicago and other major American cities.

“At the request of the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense is identifying qualified Judge Advocates and civilian attorneys for details to serve as Temporary Immigration Judges. These DOD attorneys will augment existing resources to help further combat a backlog of cases by presiding over immigration hearings,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.

But the use of military lawyers has raised concern, another person familiar with the planning said – speaking like the others on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation – that those officers may not have experience with immigration court proceedings or may receive insufficient training for complicated and potentially life-altering deportation hearings.

Each service branch has military lawyers whose primary roles are to provide service members legal advice and to represent or prosecute service members alleged to have violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The cases can range from lesser infractions, such as disrespect toward a senior officer, to more serious crimes including desertion, assault and espionage. There are several thousand lawyers serving on a part-time basis in the military reserves. It was not immediately clear how many JAGs there are in the active-duty forces.

Since the earliest days of his second term, Trump has leaned on the military to carry out his immigration policies, including sending thousands of troops to secure and patrol militarized zones along the border, building temporary facilities on military bases to hold detained people, using military aircraft to fly deportees out of the United States, and deploying National Guard troops for immigration enforcement raids in Los Angeles and Washington.

The administration’s plans also include creating rapid-reaction forces from state National Guard units across the U.S. that could be surged in cases of domestic unrest.

The Pentagon has for weeks been planning a military deployment to Chicago as Trump has said he wants to crack down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration, in a model that could later be used in other major cities.

“We’re going in,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “I didn’t say when we’re going in.”

Earlier Tuesday a federal judge ruled that Trump’s use of the National Guard in a similar operation this summer in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops under federal control from being used for law enforcement purposes. The administration is expected to immediately appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer, and it was not immediately clear how the court’s action might affect the administration’s plans for Chicago.

Last week, Hegseth approved a similar request from Jeanne Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, seeking 20 military lawyers to assist D.C.’s legal system, after weeks of immigration and law enforcement raids have filled the District’s courts.