The U.S. Department of Justice has hired a retired Marine Corps Major General to head the office in charge of bringing overseas criminal defendants to the United States for trial, a task that has grown in importance as the work of U.S. prosecutors increasingly crosses national borders.

Vaughn Ary, a lawyer who was in the Marine Corps for 28 years, has been chosen as director of the department’s Office of International Affairs, according to an internal personnel announcement seen by Reuters.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the appointment. Ary could not be reached for comment.

Ary resigned last year as the convening authority for U.S. military commissions, a job that put him in charge of operations at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, tribunals. He had angered some defense lawyers and military judges by pushing a plan to increase the pace of trials at the Guantanamo naval base by requiring judges to live there. The plan was scrapped.

The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs is in the middle of negotiating the extradition of drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman from Mexico.

Read more at Reuters