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Donald Trump sends 50 judges to help deportation backlog

President Donald Trump has sent 50 judges to speed up the deportation process.

President Donald Trump has sent 50 judges to speed up the deportation process. Photo: Getty

The US Department of Justice has deployed 50 judges to immigration detention facilities across the country to accelerate the processing of deportation cases.

Reuters reported the Department was also considering having judges rotate on shifts between 6am and 10pm to adjudicate more cases, according to two sources and a letter sent to judges on Thursday.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January that meant immigrants would be held in detention centres until their cases were heard.

This brought an end to the “catch and release” policy whereby immigrants would be released from detention on the expectation that they would appear in court on the specified date.

The revised order on travellers from six countries — Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — due to take effect on Thursday has been challenged by five states that have launched lawsuits to halt the travel ban.

Department of Justice data shows that US immigration courts have a backlog of over 550,000 cases, with many court dates set years into the future.

Mr Trump’s move is understood to be an effort to speed up the process to reduce the excessive backlog of deportation cases.

US Customs and Border Protection figures indicate the US President’s hardline rhetoric, including his promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico and to stop potential terrorists from entering the country, may have led to a decline in the number of people crossing the southern US border.

Last month about 840 people were caught or stopped from entering the country each day.

This is a 36 per cent drop in numbers during the same period last year and, rather than increasing from January as temperatures began rise, figures had a 40 per cent reduction.

There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US.

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