U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday called on the nation's immigration courts to decide cases more efficiently, amid a burgeoning backlog that is hampering the Trump administration's efforts to deport more illegal immigrants.
Sessions' memo to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency under the Department of Justice that conducts immigration court proceedings, called on judges and staff to do what they can "consistent with the law" to "increase productivity, enhance efficiencies, and ensure the timely and proper administration of justice."
President Donald Trump's administration has so far brought on 50 new immigration judges, Sessions said, in an effort to pare back a backlog of more than 600,000 cases. Sessions said in his memo that the Justice Department plans to hire 60 more judges in the next six months to cut the pending case load in half by 2020.