| Once Intended to Reduce Immigration Court Backlog, Prosecutorial Discretion Closures Continue Unabated |
| (15 Jan 2014)
During the first quarter of FY 2014, seven percent of all Immigration Court cases were closed due to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion (PD), according to the latest case-by-case records (through December 2013) obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
Originally announced in August 2011 as a program to clear cases from the accumulated court backlog, PD closures continue to be used in handling new Immigration Court cases. In fact, so far this year PD is being used much more frequently than during the first year of the PD program, FY 2012, when such closures accounted for only 4.7 percent of all cases closed.
Overall, PD has been used to close 6.6 percent of all cases since the program began. But in five courts, more than one in five cases is closed via PD: Seattle (29.8% PD closures), Tucson (26.0%), Los Angeles (23.7%), Omaha (23.1%) and Phoenix (20.7%). For more details, read the latest TRAC Immigration Report at http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/339/For complete list documenting the use of PD in each Immigration Court and hearing location, updated with the latest court data through December 2013, see TRAC's Prosecutorial Discretion tool at: http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/prosdiscretion/To keep up with TRAC, follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/tracreportsTRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to: http://trac.syr.edu/sponsor/ |
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