The Trump administration is advertising for “deportation judges” in its ongoing push to fill jobs to aid its mass deportation campaign.

The call for judges by the U.S. Department of Justice marks the latest step in an enforcement strategy that has spread from border cities to major metropolitan areas. It reflects an effort to speed up every step of the deportation process — from arrests to detention and the court rulings needed to remove people from the country.

The Department of Homeland Security amplified the recruitment effort on social media, urging attorneys to apply. “Bring down the hammer on criminal illegal aliens,” one post on X said. “Defend your communities, your culture, your very way of life.”

Despite the label “deportation judges,” the job description is standard for immigration-judge roles: hearing asylum and deportation cases, ruling on green-card applications and presiding over citizenship ceremonies. The administration says the hiring surge aims to reverse what it describes as a “de facto amnesty” under the previous administration and restore “integrity” to the courts.

The ads offer salaries of roughly $160,000 to $207,500 and a 25% hiring incentive for first-time federal employees in some locations, including courts in California. Applicants are told they can “help write the next chapter of America” and “define America for generations.”

“After four years of the Biden administration forcing immigration courts to implement a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens, this Department of Justice is restoring integrity to our immigration system and encourages talented legal professionals to join in our mission to protect national security and public safety,” the DOJ said in a statement.

Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and current resident fellow on law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the ad was “regrettable but likely inadvertent” phrasing. “It’s not the proper wording; they are not deportation judges,” Arthur said. “They do plenty of other things.”

The DOJ hiring effort comes as the Trump administration is working to expand the judges’ ranks to about 800 from 600 with funding from the massive spending bill passed by Congress earlier this year. A union representing the judges said more than 140 judges have been fired, taken a government buyout or been involuntarily reassigned since January, when Trump took office for a second time.

The new hiring blitz is part of the administration’s effort to chip away at the massive immigration-court backlog. Since Trump took office, judges have reduced the backlog by more than 440,000 cases, the sharpest decline in the system’s history, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, a DOJ agency. More than 3.75 million cases remain pending.

The judge recruitment effort follows a broader expansion across the enforcement apparatus. Border Patrol and ICE have been running their own nationwide hiring drives, offering six-figure salaries in some roles, overtime pay and bonuses aimed at filling thousands of vacant positions.

The National Association of Immigration Judges said deportation orders are just one part of the job “but it is far from the entirety of our role.”

“If the Department of Justice wants to strengthen recruitment, it might start by stopping the unnecessary firing of judges, investing in meaningful improvements to the immigration courts and focusing on making EOIR a place where talented, ethical professionals are supported — not driven away,” the union said in a statement.

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