Central American Deportation Cases
Dominate U.S. Immigration Courts

Persons from Central America continue to outnumber those from Mexico when DHS seeks deportation orders in Immigration Court, according to the latest government data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). During the first ten months of fiscal year 2015, 42 percent of DHS filings involved individuals from Central America, primarily Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. This figure is up from 25 percent three years ago in fiscal year 2012.

Figure 1. Immigration Court Filings Involving
Persons from Mexico and Central America
* First 10 Months of FY 2015

However, the proportion of individuals from Central American countries involved in Immigration Court cases has been quite variable. Ten years ago, cases from Central America also surpassed the numbers from Mexico. Over the last decade they have ranged from a low of 19 percent during FY 2009-2011 to a high of 56 percent just last year. Figure 1 shows the changing year-to-year composition of DHS Immigration Court filings involving persons from Mexico versus those from Central America.

This changing makeup of Immigration Court cases reflects in part the sharp peaks and valleys in the year-to-year flow of cases from Central American countries. For example, ten years ago there was a sharp spike of 44,202 Immigration Court cases involving persons from Honduras, with another 43,608 from El Salvador. That year Central Americans made up 40 percent of all filings, exceeding the number from Mexico. Last year, there was another spike so that Central Americans made up over half (56%) of new Immigration Court cases.

Figure 2 and Table 1 show the individual country-by-country trends for Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as well as the total for the other Central American countries (Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama).

Figure 2. Composition of Central America Immigration Court Filings
* First 10 Months of FY 2015

In contrast, cases involving persons from Mexico do not show any rapid year-to-year changes. After rising from FY 2005 through FY 2009, Mexican deportation cases have been steadily declining (see Table 1).

There was a doubling last year of Immigration Court cases involving persons from Central America, thanks in part to the recent surge in numbers of unaccompanied children and women with children arriving at the U.S. southwest border from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

As shown in Table 2, four out of every ten (40%) new court cases from Central America during FY 2014 involved unaccompanied children. And at least another 17 percent involved women with children, although this is likely an undercount. (Table 2 does not identify those Central American cases involving women with children because the court did not begin tracking these cases separately until late in FY 2014.)

So far during FY 2015, there has been a decline in the total number of cases in Immigration Court involving persons from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, with a steep drop in the number of cases involving unaccompanied children. Overall this year, 27 percent of cases from Central American countries involve unaccompanied children, down from that 40 percent figure for FY 2014.

The falloff has been particularly sharp for El Salvador; unaccompanied children currently account for only 15 percent of Immigration Court cases for that country, compared to 45 percent last year. In contrast, the proportion of cases from Honduras involving unaccompanied children has risen slightly to 36 percent, up from 33 percent in FY 2014.