Senate Democrats have raised objections to a Pentagon plan to detail up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges, saying the move could run afoul of a ban on using service members for law enforcement and could undercut the military justice system.
In a letter sent Monday to the top legal offices of the four services and provided to The Associated Press, 12 Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee said they were "deeply concerned" about the proposal, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved roughly two weeks earlier. The senators asked the services to explain where the lawyers would come from and to provide the legal analysis supporting the plan, including whether it complies with the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the military from performing law enforcement functions outside of extreme emergencies.
The letter cited a Pentagon memo outlining the detail that said military lawyers should not be assigned for more than six months and that the Justice Department would be responsible for ensuring the assignments did not violate Posse Comitatus. The senators said they were nevertheless troubled that the officers "would serve under the command and control of the Attorney General and would execute administrative determinations at the direction of the Attorney General," and that such duties are "inherently law enforcement actions that may not be performed by members of the armed forces."
The proposed detail comes as the nation’s immigration courts contend with a backlog of about 3.5 million cases and as the Justice Department has reshaped the immigration judiciary since President Donald Trump returned to office, including the firing of dozens of immigration judges and departures of others. The administration has also increasingly used military forces in domestic and border-related roles, including sending National Guard troops into U.S. cities and deploying active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Beyond the Posse Comitatus question, the senators said the plan could impair military readiness and disrupt recent reforms to the military justice system. They pointed to Congress's 2022 overhaul that created independent Offices of Special Trial Counsel in each service to handle serious "covered" offenses, including sexual assault, removing prosecutorial discretion from commanders. Those offices began handling cases at the end of last year.
"We remain extremely disturbed about the impacts on readiness of using military personnel to perform what are traditionally Department of Justice functions," the senators wrote. They asked how the Pentagon will "preserve the OSTC's progress in building specialized trial capacity" and what steps the services will take to ensure diverting OSTC staff, trial counsel and defense counsel will not "create delays or diminish quality in court-martials."
The letter said the plan illustrates a broader concern about how the administration views skilled personnel across agencies, warning that officials appear to treat staff "as pawns to be traded between agencies, rather than as professionals essential to their core missions, in order to advance misguided immigration policies."
A Pentagon memo describing the proposal acknowledged the potential conflict with Posse Comitatus and placed responsibility on the Justice Department to avoid violations. The memo also limited the duration of any detail to six months. The senators requested copies of the legal analyses and additional details about which military legal personnel would be affected and how the services would mitigate any impacts on military prosecutions and defenses.
Neither the Pentagon nor the Justice Department provided new public comment in the letter. The matter is likely to draw continued scrutiny on Capitol Hill as lawmakers weigh the legal and operational effects of using uniformed military lawyers in civilian immigration proceedings while immigration court backlogs and personnel changes at the Justice Department remain significant policy concerns.