5. Department of Homeland Security · Major · Needs Congress
Move EOIR and the Office of Immigration Litigation from DOJ to DHS
Printed page 167 5. Department of Homeland Security
“Department of Justice: Agree to move the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Office of Immigration Litigation to DHS and/or, alternatively, to treat the administrative law judges (immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals) as national security personnel, decertify their union, and move to increase hiring significantly to enable the processing of more immigration cases.”
What has happened
- Partially done
DOJ final rule (effective on publication) let the Attorney General appoint any qualified attorney as a Temporary Immigration Judge; within a week the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to serve as temporary immigration judges. By 2026-05-21 EOIR reported 153 permanent judges hired in the fiscal year and a corps of nearly 700.
- Partially done
No transfer to DHS; the Mandate's alternative is being carried out. Public Law 119-21 §100054(1) appropriated $3.33 billion to DOJ through FY2029 including for "hiring immigration judges and necessary support staff" and set a ceiling of 800 immigration judges from November 2028 — the "increase hiring significantly" limb, enacted.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- No bill or presidential document moving EOIR or OIL to DHS was found (bill titles in Congress for “Executive Office for Immigration Review”/“immigration judge”: only S. 3326 / H.R. 6497 “Temporary Immigration Judge Integrity Act”, introduced Dec. 2025, and S.J.Res. 190 disapproving EOIR’s BIA appellate-procedures rule, which failed 46–48 on 2026-06-16).
- Union limb: the National Association of Immigration Judges was decertified by the FLRA in 2020, before the tracking window, and had not regained recognition (govexec, Dec. 2024). Executive Order 14251 (2025-03-27) excluded the whole Department of Justice from the federal labor-management relations program (§1-405) without naming EOIR — noted, not counted as a separate event. The Supreme Court’s 2026-05-26 ruling in the NAIJ speech-policy case (SCOTUSblog) concerns judges’ speech, not their status.
- “National security personnel” limb: nothing found.
- Action
- transfer
- Object
- Executive Office for Immigration Review and Office of Immigration Litigation
- ID
- 453