In our first report today, we discussed Trump using the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport criminal illegals.

One of the reasons Trump wanted to use that act was to bypass due process due to the backlog of cases in immigration courts.

After losing the AEA appeal, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is chipping in to help speed up the processing of these cases.

Doing what I was elected to do

When Joe Biden opened our borders, he literally added millions of cases to an already overwhelmed immigration court.

Trump figured there would be little resistance to removing the worst of the worst, so he activated the AEA to remove members of the TdA gang, as well as MS-13 gang members, and the most nefarious of the illegals that were in the country.

That order, as we expected, was challenged, with Trump responding, "I'm doing what I was elected to do, remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don't seem to want me to do that. We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years."

That is an exaggeration, but his point was taken. The courts have an enormous backlog, and that is undeniable.

The backlog

As of July 2025, immigration courts had received more than 460,000 new cases in this fiscal year.

Reports showed that of those cases, more than 1.5% of proposed deportations were based on criminal activity.

So far this fiscal year, the courts have processed more than 810,000 cases.

The court now has a backlog of more than 3.4 million cases, which, if the court keeps its current pace, assuming Trump can keep immigration numbers where they are, would take the court about eight years to litigate (this estimate takes the current backlog with expected new cases into account).

Speeding things up

One of the biggest problems we have in getting cases processed is that we simply do not have enough immigration judges to hear the cases in a timely fashion, which Secretary Hegseth is now hoping to address.

Hegseth will send 600 military attorneys to the DOJ to serve as immigration judges to speed up the processing of the cases. They will be assigned in groups of 150 starting almost immediately.

I love the idea, but this will be challenged, both by Democrats and groups like the ACLU, which will say these appointments are not legal, and it will surely wind up going before the Supreme Court at some point.

But here is my question… Democrats are whining about due process, which Trump is now giving them, yet they will try to block this order to slow down the process. You really have to start asking yourself why Democrats are doing everything in their power to keep illegal immigrants in this country. I know what my answer is… but what do you think?