Trump's crusade in chaos as experienced DOJ lawyers abandon ship

The Justice Department has suffered from serious brain drain over the first year of President Donald Trump's administration. Thus far the department has been cut in half, and now new numbers show that one of Trump's flagship issues is suffering as a result.

Independent journalist Scott MacFarlane recently uncovered a civil lawsuit in which a lawyer with the DOJ revealed, “the Appellate Section has lost over 40 percent of its attorneys since February 2025, due to retirement, resignation, or temporary transfer.” The New Republic's Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling sounded the alarm that an exodus of DOJ layers and staff has caused a "huge backlog in work."

On Thursday, Bloomberg Law reported that in the past year, about one-third of the DOJ lawyers handling Trump's immigration agenda are gone. It puts his mass deportation crusade in jeopardy.

"The Office of Immigration Litigation, which had more than 300 attorneys at the start of Trump’s second term, has seen at least 100 retire, quit, or otherwise depart since January 2025," reported Bloomberg, citing three former attorneys from the office. "Many who left were in mid-level to senior roles and worked across multiple administrations."

It means Trump's deportations will get caught up in the courts, with lawyers spread too thin to handle the caseload. Meanwhile, the administration is dealing with litigation over its mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants, which is on its way to the Supreme Court after several federal appeals court battles.

Sarah Wilson, who left her job last year as an assistant director in the immigration office's general litigation and appeals, told Bloomberg that these jobs require "a level of seniority and experience to litigate these cases at the scale and on the pace that these types of cases need to be litigated."

In several offices, Trump's DOJ has tried to hire rookie prosecutors, though it hasn't worked out well either.

The office is located in the Civil Division and handles some of the highest-profile cases the administration has in Trump's second term. "This includes the thousands of habeas cases," as the Department of Homeland Security arrests migrants across the U.S.

Eight former members of the office said that in the past 16 months, staff have become "demoralized by a mounting caseload and the ousting of multiple office leaders, including veteran DOJ litigator-turned-whistleblower Erez Reuveni." He was among the DOJ leaders who exposed abuses of power in some deportation cases to the public. He submitted a 27-page disclosure to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about the DOJ's use of the Alien Enemies Act. He accused top DOJ official-turned-judge Emil Bove of instructing DOJ lawyers to ignore a judge's orders.

The absence of higher-level lawyers has led the DOJ leadership to pull in politically appointed counsel to work on immigration cases, an analysis of the court docket shows.

DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre told Bloomberg that the Office of Immigration Litigation is “continuing to fire on all cylinders to defend immigration cases and file denaturalization cases against those who take advantage of American citizenship."

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