Designation of Temporary Immigration Judges

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <SUBAGY>Executive Office for Immigration Review</SUBAGY> <CFR>8 CFR Parts 1001, 1003, 1208, and 1240</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Dir. Order No. 02-2025]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1125-AA77</RIN> <SUBJECT>Designation of Temporary Immigration Judges</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Executive Office of Immigration Review (“EOIR”), Department of Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule aligns the regulatory requirements for candidates for Temporary Immigration Judge (“TIJ”) appointments to mirror the regulatory requirements for permanent Immigration Judge (“IJ”) appointments, thus allowing the Attorney General and Director of EOIR to select TIJs from a larger pool of well-qualified candidates. Additionally, the Department of Justice (“the Department” or “DOJ”) is making various technical and non-substantive changes to its regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective August 28, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Stephanie Gorman, Acting Assistant Director, Office of Policy, Executive Office for Immigration Review, 5107 Leesburg Pike, Suite 2500, Falls Church, VA 22041; telephone (703) 305-0289. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Legal Authority</HD> The Department issues this rule pursuant to section 103(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA” or “the Act”), 8 U.S.C. 1103(g), as amended by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (“HSA”), Public Law 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135 (as amended). The HSA provides that EOIR exists within the Department and that it shall be “subject to the direction and regulation of the Attorney General” under section 103(g) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1103(g). Further, under the HSA, the Attorney General retains authority to “establish such regulations, . . . issue such instructions, review such administrative determinations in immigration proceedings, delegate such authority, and perform such other acts as the Attorney General determines to be necessary for carrying out” the Attorney General's authorities under the INA. HSA 1102(g)(2), 116 Stat. at 2274; INA 103(g)(2), 8 U.S.C. 1103(g)(2). Those authorities include conducting removal proceedings under section 240 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1229a (“section 240 removal proceedings”). Furthermore, in Attorney General Order Number 6260-2025, the Attorney General has exercised her authority under 28 U.S.C. 509 and 510 to delegate her authority to issue regulations related to immigration matters within the jurisdiction of EOIR to EOIR's Director. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> EOIR administers the Nation's immigration court system. Cases generally commence before an IJ after the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) files a charging document with the immigration court. <E T="03">See</E> 8 CFR 1003.14(a). EOIR primarily decides whether aliens who are charged by DHS with violating immigration law pursuant to the INA should be ordered removed from the United States or should be granted relief or protection from removal and be permitted to remain in the United States. EOIR's Office of the Chief Immigration Judge administers these adjudications in immigration courts nationwide. Until 2025, the immigration court system faced an ever-growing backlog of pending cases. A November 2024 report by the Congressional Research Service found that this backlog “has grown each year since [fiscal year (“FY”)] 2006 and has ballooned in recent years,” reaching “1 million [pending cases] for the first time in FY2019” and “nearly 2.5 million at the end of FY2023.” Holly Straut-Eppsteiner, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IN12463, <E T="03">Immigration Courts: Decline in New Cases at the End of FY2024</E> 1 (2024). This backlog peaked at approximately 4.1 million cases in January 2025. <E T="03">See</E> EOIR, <E T="03">Pending Cases, New Cases, and Total Completions-Last 12 Months</E> (Aug. 4, 2025), <E T="03">https://www.justice.gov/eoir/media/1344796/dl?inline</E> [ <E T="03">https://perma.cc/2XYE-EG8R</E> ]. Effective November 1, 2028, EOIR will be authorized to employ “not more than 800 immigration judges, along with the necessary support staff.” <E T="03">See</E> One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Public Law 119-21, sec. 100054(1)(B), 139 Stat. 72 (2025). To assist with the immigration courts' substantial caseload, the EOIR Director (“Director”), with the approval of the Attorney General, may designate or select TIJs, which have the authority of an IJ to adjudicate assigned cases and administer immigration court matters. 8 CFR 1003.10(e). Prior to this final rule, individuals eligible to be designated as TIJs were limited to former IJs and Appellate Immigration Judges, EOIR administrative law judges (“ALJs”)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> or ALJs retired from EOIR, ALJs from other Executive Branch agencies with the consent of their agencies, and Department attorneys with at least 10 years of legal experience in the field of immigration law. <E T="03">Id.</E> The regulatory provision authorizing TIJs, 8 CFR 1003.10(e), was added through an interim final rule (“IFR”) with a request for comments in 2014. <E T="03">See</E> Designation of Temporary Immigration Judges, 79 FR 39953 (July 11, 2014) (“2014 TIJ IFR”). The Department received 17 public comments on that IFR. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  EOIR's Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer currently employs four ALJs to hear cases arising under sections 274A, 274B, and 274C of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1324a, 1324b, 1324c. <E T="03">See</E> EOIR, <E T="03">Meet the Administrative Law Judges</E> (Oct. 10, 2023), <E T="03">https://www.justice.gov/eoir/meet-administrative-law-judges</E> [ <E T="03">https://perma.cc/V4NU-H6LQ</E> ]. </FTNT> On May 29, 2024, the Department finalized a proposed rule that added a new regulatory definition of the term “noncitizen” to be used in place of the statutory term “alien” and added a new regulatory definition of the term “unaccompanied child” to be used in place of the statutory term “unaccompanied alien child,” as defined at 6 U.S.C. 279(g)(2). <E T="03">See</E> Efficient Case and Docket Management in Immigration Proceedings, 89 FR 46742 (May 29, 2024) (“ECDM Final Rule”). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Public Comments and Responses on the 2014 TIJ IFR</HD> Comments received on the 2014 TIJ IFR are organized by topic below. Most commenters were supportive of the IFR, stating, for example, that appointing TIJs will greatly assist with managing the border and lower the case loads of permanent IJs. In contrast, commenters opposing the rule primarily raised concerns about the ability of certain Department attorneys to be impartial or opposed spending additional taxpayer money to hire more IJs. Commenters generally provided proposals for types of attorneys that should or should not be allowed to serve as TIJs and policies EOIR should adopt with respect to training and compensation as well as the regulations governing the use of other agencies' ALJs. The Department addresses these comments below. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. General Support</HD> <E T="03">Comments:</E> Many commenters generally supported the Department's decision to allow for the appointment of TIJs, stating, for example, that the appointment of TIJs “will be of great help” given that the immigration courts have “more cases before them than ever before.” Commenters also asserted that appointing TIJs is not a substitute for hiring more permanent IJs. <E T="03">Response:</E> The Department agrees with the goal of the 2014 TIJ IFR but, as stated below in Section IV of this preamble, its requirements for TIJs limited the IFR's effectiveness. The Department does not view its authority to appoint TIJs as a substitute for hiring to fill permanent IJ positions and continues to recruit candidates to fill permanent IJ positions. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Proposed Regulatory Changes</HD> <E T="03">Comments:</E> Many commenters proposed changes to the regulation's limitations on who may be appointed as a TIJ. Most such commenters asserted that the requirements were too narrow and may restrict the Department's ability to fill the TIJ positions with qualified applicants. Commenters proposed various amendments to the provisions setting forth the TIJ requirements, such as expanding the candidate pool to non-DOJ attorneys with 7 years of immigration law experience, to all former government employees with 10 years of immigration law experience, to all Federal administrative judges regardless of years of experience, or to all Department attorneys with 7, or even 5, years of immigration law experience. Other commenters proposed narrowing the pool, such as to former EOIR adjudicators, out of concern that those without prior experience would drain training resources or by excluding Department attorneys from specific offices the commenter viewed as hostile to aliens. <E T="03">Response:</E> As explained in Section IV of this preamble, the Department agrees with commenters that the 2014 TIJ IFR's requirements for TIJs were too narrow and impeded the Department's ability to use the TIJ authority to the extent needed. Rather than adopt different benchmarks by regulation, the Department has decided to adopt the same approach that it has long taken for permanent IJs—that is, require by regulation that they be attorneys but leave the specific criteria to internal policy. <FTREF/> <SU>2</SU> <E T="03">See</E> 8 CFR 1003.10(a). This will allow the Department flexibility in TIJ hiring choices similar to those the Department has for hiring permanent IJs. To the extent commenters cast doubt on the ability of Department attorneys to serve as neutral arbiters and thus question whether they should be allowed to serve as TIJs, the Department disagree ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 52k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━