AMNA NAWAZ: A key part of the Trump administration's hard-line immigration agenda is to deport immigrants without legal status more quickly.

But there's a massive backlog in immigration courts.

And the Justice Department has fired or not renewed the contracts of dozens of judges who decide whether individuals should be allowed to remain in the U.S. Ximena Bustillo covers immigration policy for NPR, and she joins me now.

Welcome to the "News Hour."

XIMENA BUSTILLO, NPR: Thank you.

AMNA NAWAZ: So what do we know about what's behind the firing and the nonrenewals of these dozens of immigration judges?

XIMENA BUSTILLO: So, last week, the Justice Department decided to not renew the contracts of 17 immigration judges scattered across the country in states like Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas.

This continues the pattern of firing immigration judges as they reach their two-year probationary mark.

So, in total, about 65 immigration judges have received an e-mail that tells them that the attorney general has decided to not keep them on beyond their two-year mark.

Immigration judges are not like a lot of other judges within the judiciary branch that we normally talk about, think about them a little bit more like civil servants.

They work under the Justice Department, and technically are a bit more at will.

AMNA NAWAZ: And is there any concern that there's something political about these firings or nonrenewals?

XIMENA BUSTILLO: Democrats have raised a lot of concern, particularly with this administration's approach to dismissing so many judges.

So, again, that number is up to about 65.

During the last administration, the Biden administration, there were a few firings, I want to say about six, in the early years of the Biden administration.

And Republicans raised much concern with the Biden administration's approach to sending those judges home after their two-year mark.

But, of course, we have far surpassed that number at this point.

And, in total, about 100 judges have left the bench.

The ones that were not receiving that e-mail, some of them have decided to take the so-called fork in the road.

That's the voluntary resignation program that the Trump administration is using to reduce the size of the federal government.

AMNA NAWAZ: And just clarify for us briefly, who exactly is going to these immigration courts?

And if the judges aren't there, as many judges aren't there, what's the impact on their cases?

XIMENA BUSTILLO: So immigration court is the place where people go to legally seek reasons to not face a final deportation order.

Many of these are going to be asylum-seeking requests.

And so that is one of the many places where immigrants are able to say that they should not be deported because of specific reasons, including seeking asylum.

Without these judges, we see the cases continue to backlog.

There is already a nearly four million case backlog in immigration court, in part because there just are not simply enough judges to move through them quickly enough.

AMNA NAWAZ: Also related to President Trump's broader deportation efforts, you were reporting this week on the Department of Homeland Security preparing to use military bases in New Jersey and Indiana to detain people accused of being here illegally.

How will that work?

And what does this say to you about the relationship between the president's immigration agenda and the use of the military?

XIMENA BUSTILLO: The military has been a huge asset to this administration since the early weeks, when an emergency declaration was declared saying that there is an invasion at the southern border.

And that is what unlocks a lot of resources, particularly from the Pentagon, to a separate agency, the Homeland Security Department.

What occurred last week was the Pentagon approved a new request from the Department of Homeland Security to do two things, open up its access at a National Guard base in Indiana and its access to use an Air Force base in New Jersey to detain migrants.

There are other bases that have been approved for this kind of a request across the country.

So this expands the use of military bases as detention centers, but also to utilize them to facilitate deportations out of the country.

The other thing that they approved was doubling the space at the Guantanamo Bay Naval facility that we have seen this administration also use.

They have generally been able to only put about 200 people there at a time.

That will now increase to 400.

AMNA NAWAZ: Ximena, I want to ask you, six months into President Trump's second term, we have seen the rhetoric when it comes to deportations that they are targeting the worst of the worst.

And there are certainly people who are being detained and deported who have violent criminal histories.

But what do we know about the facts around that in terms of most of the people who are being detained and slated for deportation?

XIMENA BUSTILLO: According to the data that's publicly available by the Department of Homeland Security, about 70 percent of people who are in immigration detention generally have been arrested and are in immigration detention broadly were without criminal convictions.

That is a very clear distinction to make.

And that data also accounts for some of the numbers of the start of the fiscal year, which, of course, were at the end of 2024.

Now, of course, that's still going through a lot of process.

There's a lot of changing numbers and data, but we have seen this administration scale up its ability to increase its arrests across the board.

AMNA NAWAZ: NPR's Ximena Bustillo, thank you so much for joining us.

Appreciate it.

XIMENA BUSTILLO: Thank you.