Sponsors (17)
The bill seeks to reduce immigration court backlogs by adding trained temporary judges and emphasizing high qualifications, but it trades off continuity, potential impartiality concerns, added administrative costs, and the limited enforceability of nonbinding qualification statements.
Immigrants: Expands the pool of judges through short-term appointments so more removal cases can be heard faster, helping reduce the backlog and shorten wait times for case resolutions.
Immigrants and EOIR operations: Requires training and management procedures developed with Chief and Regional Judges, which should improve consistency, oversight, and quality of temporary judges' decisions.
Immigrants and federal employees: Affirms that immigration judges are expected to meet high qualifications and signals intent not to substitute temporary judges for permanent ones, supporting efforts to appoint and retain permanent judges and promote more accurate, consistent decisions.
Immigrants and due process: Allowing DOJ attorneys to serve as temporary judges could raise real and perceived impartiality conflicts, undermining confidence in fairness of removal proceedings.
Immigrants and parties: Short-term (six-month) temporary judges may reduce continuity in case handling, complicate appeals and case management, and impede consistent development of records or reasoning across a case's lifespan.
Taxpayers/general public: Expanding, recruiting, training, managing, and paying a temporary judge workforce could increase administrative costs for DOJ/EOIR, imposing additional budgetary burdens.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Allows the Attorney General to appoint temporary immigration judges for up to six-month renewable terms from specified experienced adjudicators and DOJ attorneys, with training and term limits.
Official title: Codify in statute the authorization of the Attorney General to appoint experienced immigration law experts as temporary immigration judges to reduce the number of pending cases in immigration courts.
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Adam Schiff · Last progress December 3, 2025
Creates a temporary appointment authority for immigration judges: the Attorney General may appoint temporary immigration judges to serve renewable terms not to exceed six months, with eligibility limited to specified categories of former or current adjudicators and experienced immigration-law practitioners. The bill sets training and management requirements, parity of adjudicatory authority with permanent immigration judges, limits consecutive service to four six-month terms (two years), and imposes a three-year cooldown before reappointment after temporary service ends. Also contains a nonbinding congressional statement that temporary judges are not intended to replace permanent immigration judges and that immigration judges must have deep knowledge of immigration law given the high stakes of removal proceedings.