GOP Pushes to Holding Migrant Criminals Accountable After Biden Veto of Bill to Add Judges

An overburdened judicial system was denied relief on Jan. 3 when outgoing President Joe Biden vetoed the JUDGES Act of 2024, which would have expanded the number of permanent federal district judges across three presidential administrations. 

The bipartisan bill would have created 66 new judgeships. Their creation would have been staggered such that President-elect Trump would have been permitted to appoint more than 20 additional judges to the bench during his second term.

The bill had passed with an amendment in the Senate by unanimous consent, having been cosponsored by more than a half-dozen Democratic senators. After Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election, however, Biden withdrew his support. 

Biden characterized the effort to add more judges as disingenuous in a statement accompanying his veto. “S. 4199 would create new judgeships in States where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies. Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now,” the president said.

The veto came as Republicans are energized to confront the border crisis. More federal district judges would alleviate the backlog in criminal cases against illegal aliens, allowing their deportations to occur more swiftly.

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled House is fast-tracking the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, which would expand deportation penalties for illegal aliens convicted of sex offenses or domestic abuse. Rep. Laurel Lee R-Fla., a cosponsor of the bill and a proponent of a similar piece of legislation, the Laken Riley Act, told The Daily Signal that she thinks illegal aliens who commit crimes should be prioritized in deportation.

“We saw the tragedy that occurred with Laken Riley, who was killed by an illegal immigrant with a prior criminal record. I believe her death could have been prevented if illegal immigrants who are criminals were prioritized to be deported. That is why we passed the Laken Riley Act [on Tuesday] to give our law enforcement the tools needed to keep criminals off our streets before they threaten the lives of innocent Americans,” Lee said in a statement. On Thursday, the Senate overcame a filibuster of the Laken Riley Act, clearing the way for a vote on it in the upper chamber.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., who also cosponsored the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, told The Daily Signal, “Congressman Harris has been very vocal about the fact that there are currently more than a million illegal immigrants ‘with active deportation orders’ that the Biden Administration allowed into the country—and he believes they should be deported.” The number of illegal aliens with deportation orders was recently estimated to be more than 1.4 million. 

Illegal aliens are convicted of federal crimes in federal district courts. But Congress has not, according to the fact findings of the JUDGES Act, created “a new district court judgeship since 2003 and has not enacted comprehensive judgeship legislation since 1990.” That’s coupled with a 30% increase in filings of cases since 1990. That amounts to an average of 491 case filings per judge per year.

In its 2023 report, the Judicial Conference of the United States, an advisory committee for court administration that is composed of federal judges and includes the chief justice of the United States, recommended Congress create 66 new judgeships. 

Since expanding the federal bench is for the time being foreclosed, Republicans are left with alleviating the burden on the federal judicial system by confirming as many of Trump’s judicial appointees as they can in the next four years.

During his first term, Trump appointed 234 federal judges. Biden just barely surpassed that number in his one term. If Trump continues at the same pace, and Republicans manage to hold on to the Senate after the midterm elections in 2026, he would be on track to beat the totals of recent two-term presidents— Barack Obama (320), George W. Bush (322), and Bill Clinton (367).

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