| Under Trump: Civil Lawsuits Up To Redress Immigration Action and Inaction |
| (24 Apr 2017)
The latest available case-by-case records from the federal courts show that as of the end of March 2017, 763 new civil immigration lawsuits have been filed in disputes involving immigration matters since January 20, 2017.
Under President Trump, monthly filings in March were up 40.5 percent when compared with those of the same period in the previous year, and have more than doubled from levels of five years ago.
According to the case-by-case court records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, nearly half (47%) of these 763 suits were brought by individuals detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These individuals sought release from their detention and/or a court order to prevent their deportation. Most of the remaining suits challenged government inaction. One third (33%) were mandamus actions to compel the federal government to act on visa or related applications. Another 8 percent sought a hearing or other action on naturalization applications. Four out of every ten of these new lawsuits were filed in just three federal districts - all centered in the greater New York City area. The federal district court in the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn) had the largest number with 136 suits. In second place with 90 suits was the New Jersey federal district court. The federal court in the Southern District of New York (Manhattan) had the third highest number in the nation with 77. Nine out of every ten lawsuits in New Jersey were filed by ICE detainees seeking to be released from custody. In contrast, in the New York East judicial district, three out of four were seeking to compel action on a visa or naturalization application. Since President Trump assumed office, a total of 52 out of the 94 federal judicial districts had one or more new civil immigration lawsuits filed. To see the full report, including the number of post-Trump filings for each district, go to: http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/467/ In addition, many of TRAC's free query tools - which track new DHS filings, court backlogs, the handling of juvenile cases and much more - have now been updated through March 2017. For an index to the full list of TRAC's immigration tools go to: http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/ If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at: http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/tracreports TRAC 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 U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to: http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl |
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Copyright 2017