Internal DOJ documents tell story on caseload surge amid Trump immigration moves

A push to force all migrants to await deportation from detention and other Trump administration immigration policies have pushed the number of cases to record highs for the Department of Justice (DOJ) branch that handles such litigation.

The Hill recently obtained internal DOJ metrics showing staff levels have plummeted while the department is also handling unprecedented caseloads.

But that dynamic was particularly pronounced in the civil division’s Office of Immigration Litigation (OIL), which has lost nearly 80 attorneys as workload has jumped 63 percent.

There are multiple factors at play behind the surge.

“I think there are two big drivers,” said Margy O’Herron, a former official in the deputy attorney general’s office during the Biden administration who oversaw immigration work.

“OIL represents the government in cases where the Board [of Immigration Appeals] denies asylum,” she said, noting that grants of the protection are at a “historic low.”

The other is the Trump administration’s decision to cut off bond hearings for migrants, prompting a wave of habeas petitions from migrants demanding the government justify why they are being held.

“The habeas cases have grown significantly, because the administration has begun detaining people who have no criminal history, have been in the country for a long time, and would not have been detained under prior administrations. Now they’re holding them in immigration jails,” said O’Herron, now a senior fellow at the Brennan Center.

There may also be another wave of new cases coming that would not be reflected in the data obtained by The Hill: the Trump administration’s effort to boost denaturalizations.

The DOJ boasted Monday that it had filed 40 denaturalization cases, calling it “the largest volume of complaints submitted in a single period under the Trump administration,” from late August to early October.

One former OIL attorney said staffers there have been........

© The Hill