The Department of Justice on Thursday announced the swearing in of 77 permanent immigration judges and an additional five temporary judges in a bid to expedite the processing of deportations.

The judges fall under the purview of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which is responsible for handling the backlog of immigration cases. The DOJ also announced that, since President Donald Trump's return to the White House, the EOIR had processed more than 1 million cases and reduced the total backlog from 4 million to 3.5 million.

“The Trump administration is committed to reestablishing an immigration judge corps that is dedicated to restoring the rule to the law in our nation’s immigration system,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Today, we are onboarding the largest immigration judge class in agency history. This could only happen thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership and commitment to securing our borders. I also applaud EOIR’s leadership team for helping facilitate these hiring efforts and recruiting highly qualified and talented personnel in record time.”

Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, but has faced considerable legal pushback to his efforts to speedily remove large numbers of people from the country. The DHS has estimated that as many as 22 million illegal aliens were in the country when Trump took office.

As of January, DHS claimed to have overseen the departure of 3 million illegal aliens, through a combination of physical deportations and voluntary exits.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent for Just the News. Follow him on X.