In search of to develop Florida’s position in federal immigration enforcement, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Might 2025 submitted the state’s Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan to the Trump administration.
The plan, endorsed by President Donald Trump, says all of Florida’s roughly 47,000 regulation enforcement officers have acquired, or quickly will obtain, coaching to behave as immigration officers. It’s a part of an effort to, because the plan notes, “maintain state-led border security operations in the absence of federal support.”
The DeSantis plan features a proposal to deputize Florida’s 9 Nationwide Guard Choose Advocate Common’s Corps officers to function immigration judges. JAG officers are attorneys who function authorized advisers, prosecutors, protection counsel and navy judges in a variety of issues particular to the armed forces. That features courts-martial and civil issues involving the navy.
DeSantis has mentioned the transfer is critical to create a fast-track deportation system at Florida’s new immigration detention facility within the Everglades, Alligator Alcatraz.
He has dismissed due course of considerations – corresponding to a scarcity of coaching and independence – from authorized specialists, pointing to the backlog in immigration courts. Immigration judges in Florida’s immigration courts have one of many largest backlogs within the nation, with over half 1,000,000 circumstances.
Congress establishes immigration coverage
The Structure grants Congress, not the president or state governments, the facility to ascertain immigration legal guidelines.
Beneath the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also referred to as the McCarran-Walter Act, Congress created a transparent course of for immigration removing circumstances.
Normally, a U.S. noncitizen might face removing from the nation based mostly on violations to the immigration legal guidelines. These vary from unauthorized entry to committing or being convicted of sure crimes.
Congress designated the Government Workplace for Immigration Overview, an company throughout the Division of Justice that homes the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals, because the physique completely chargeable for deciding immigration removing circumstances. The workplace additionally particulars the authority and requirements for a way immigration judges conduct deportation hearings.
Immigration judges endure rigorous vetting and coaching. And their selections are topic to enchantment to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the executive appellate physique for selections made by immigration judges.
The McCarran-Walter Act additionally comprises a number of provisions that topic most immigration court docket selections corresponding to removing or asylum to judicial overview in federal courts. That may occur on direct enchantment or as a part of habeas corpus petitions that problem the legality of detention or removing.
The system is way from good. However Congress designed it to make sure authorized experience and due course of ensures.
As an immigration scholar, I consider that permitting Florida JAG officers to function immigration judges bypasses this framework that’s set in regulation, and violates the constitutionally mandated separation of powers.
JAG officers, together with these in Florida’s Nationwide Guard, should not ruled by the McCarran-Walter Act. They’re navy attorneys in a completely separate system, overseen by the Uniform Code of Navy Justice, which defines the position of navy judges. The code retains a novel navy character that’s considerably completely different from the judicial appellate system that governs immigration administrative rulings.
A protester stands outdoors Alligator Alcatraz in Ochopee, Florida on July 12, 2025.
AP Picture/Alexandra Rodriguez
Merely put, neither Trump nor DeSantis can create a completely new system of immigration judges outdoors of the one already established by Congress.
Federal companies can’t deputize JAGs
A present immigration provision, referred to as the 287(g) program, authorizes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to collaborate with native regulation enforcement to implement federal immigration legal guidelines.
However this provision solely authorizes deputizing native regulation enforcement to help “in relation to the investigation, apprehension, or detention” of immigrants – not the arbitration of deportation circumstances.
Within the practically three many years since 287(g) was enacted, no state or native officers – not to mention navy officers – have been permitted to behave as immigration judges.
DeSantis’ plan seeks to transform Florida’s JAG officers from state to federal officers to operate as immigration judges. Trump’s approval of this plan would additionally exceed the scope of his statutory authority.
Federal statutes enable the president to federalize the Nationwide Guard in restricted situations: throughout occasions of warfare or nationwide emergency.
However neither DeSantis’ rhetoric nor Trump’s framing of undocumented immigration as an “invasion” meet these authorized thresholds.
An aerial view of the migrant detention heart in Ochopee, Florida on July 4, 2025.
Alon Skuy/Getty Photographs
JAGs can’t interact in home regulation enforcement
Even when Florida’s Nationwide Guard have been federalized, JAG officers nonetheless couldn’t legally function immigration judges.
The Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878, restricts the usage of federal navy private in civilian regulation enforcement. It displays a longstanding American precept: The navy shouldn’t police civilians.
Immigration enforcement – together with deciding whether or not somebody is deported – is basically a civilian enforcement operate.
The one slim exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act’s restrictions require a transparent statutory foundation, corresponding to Trump invoking the Rebellion Act of 1807, a regulation that might enable the president to depend on the navy for home enforcement to quell a riot or widespread violence.
Due course of considerations
The DeSantis plan additionally compromises constitutionally assured rights to a good course of for immigrants dealing with removing.
Immigration regulation is notoriously advanced. Even skilled immigration attorneys battle to maintain up with its fixed modifications.
JAG officers, educated primarily in navy regulation, would face immense challenges deciphering and making use of immigration statutes. That’s very true with solely weeks of preparation, as DeSantis proposes.
However due course of isn’t solely about information of authorized technicalities. The Fifth Modification ensures due course of rights to all individuals on U.S. soil, no matter immigration standing.
For many years, courts have interpreted these protections to incorporate truthful hearings earlier than certified immigration judges – and, in most situations, judicial overview.
By circumventing established procedures, DeSantis’ plan dangers making a system the place expedited deportations come on the expense of accuracy and constitutional rights.
