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Contact: media@vera.org

Fairness to Freedom Campaign Warns of "Authoritarian Playbook" as Trump Administration Militarizes Immigration Courts

WASHINGTON, DC – Amid the Trump administration’s ongoing push for mass detention and deportations, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it is loosening hiring qualifications and tapping military lawyers to serve as civil immigration judges. Since the start of his second term, President Trump has fired or prompted the resignations of more than one hundred immigration judges, depleting the immigration judge workforce by one-sixth in only a matter of months.

Hiring under-qualified judges is just the latest of the administration’s efforts to dismantle due process for people navigating the U.S. immigration system—efforts that have to date included the expansion of expedited removals, the gutting of legal representation programs, expanding detention, denying bond, blocking detained people from their lawyers, making arrests in immigration court, deploying the National Guard across the country, and more.

Shayna Kessler and Nicole Melaku, co-leaders of the Fairness to Freedom campaign for universal representation, issued the following statements:

Shayna Kessler, director of the Advancing Universal Representation initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice: “This is a dangerous consolidation of power by the commander-in-chief, using the military to infiltrate what should be an independent and impartial judiciary, and manipulating a court system to serve an anti-immigrant political agenda. Military lawyers are unqualified to oversee complex immigration cases, often with life and death consequences. This move will inevitably increase already unprecedented detention rates and wrongful deportations and make our already unfair immigration system even more dysfunctional and unjust. Due process in immigration court requires a trained, impartial immigration judge; a safe setting; and access to legal representation—all critical components for ensuring fairness in our immigration system and protecting families’ freedom and unity.”

Nicole Melaku, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans: “As a democracy, our courts should be fair, safe, and trusted places where justice is upheld and people can defend their rights and freedom. Instead, we are quickly seeing the pillars of due process being systematically dismantled by the Trump administration. This has led to family separation, prolonged detention, removals without due process, and eroded trust in our legal systems. After terminating judges for failing to meet their deportation quotas, the administration is taking a page from the authoritarian playbook by appointing military personnel—many without judicial experience—to the bench. Prioritizing politics over due process will result in more people being denied a fair chance to remain rooted in their communities, with their families, in this nation they call home.”

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Fairness to Freedom: The Campaign for Universal Representation was launched by the National Partnership for New Americans and the Vera Institute of Justice in April 2022 with a coalition of more than 200 organizations and legal service providers. The campaign’s goal is to support the passage of the Fairness to Freedom Act to establish a federal right to representation for all immigrants facing deportation.