In an effort to speed up deportations of illegal aliens and clear a huge backlog of immigration cases, the Department of Justice is going to assign quotas to immigration judges that will be tied to performance reviews.

The move comes as the Trump administration is ramping up efforts to more efficiently enforce immigration laws and remove illegals who have committed additional crimes from the U.S.

Politico:

The minimum quotas, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, will require judges to clear 700 cases a year and to see that fewer of their rulings are sent back by a higher court.

According to the Journal's report, the Justice Department says that on average over the past five years judges have cleared 678 cases, but some judges completed far more cases.  The system operates on a sliding scale, so judges who fail to meet the top standards could see their performance review downgraded.

Along with those requirements, judges will also need to meet thresholds in other areas including a demand that 85 percent of cases for people that have been detained be completed in three days after a judge has heard the merits of the particular case.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has previously stressed the work his department is doing to reduce the immigration case backlog, which numbers into the hundreds of thousands.

There are two major problems that need to be addressed to streamline the deportation process and clear the backlog of cases that now numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

The first problem is in the number of immigration judges.  There simply aren't enough of them to do the job.  A.G. Sessions has promised to increase I.J. numbers, but it's a slow process.

The second problem is case law, according to the Center for Immigration Studies:

Recent federal court decisions have complicated IJs removal decisions, slowing proceedings and requiring additional continuances.12  In addition, recent decisions from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have increased the number of aliens who are eligible for bond, requiring the scheduling of bond hearings and rescheduling of cases when aliens are released from custody.

More than 70% of illegals who are released on bond never show up for their hearings.  They simply disappear into the vast illegal alien underground.

"The fear of being detained when you go to immigration court, plus the lack of providing the address correctly, play roles in people not showing up for their hearings," Allen said.  "Many of my Central American clients, once they were released from custody, their addresses changed and they never understood clearly their responsibility to maintain the immigration court apprised of their new addresses, and they did not get notices for the hearings.  I have other clients who are criminal aliens and they were afraid to be detained, and they never appeared."

For Metcalf, the evidence is clear.

"Absent enforcement," Metcalf says in Courting Disaster, "has resulted in 953,506 violators unremoved years after their deportation orders were final, a 58 percent increase since 2002."

It's unclear how hiring more immigration judges will alter that fact.  Until the law is changed to detain most illegals until their deportation hearings, we will be fighting a losing battle in protecting our borders.