Tracking Immigration Court Outcomes by County of Immigrant's Residence

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University has just added new features that permit the public to examine the immigrant's residence in all deportation cases before the Immigrant Court. The new features track the state and county of residence during the period FY 2001 through February of 2018.

The newly expanded detail tool covers all Immigration Court deportation cases, both past and present. This joins TRAC's earlier released mapping tool which focuses just on currently pending court cases. The new tool is particularly powerful because users can drill in to see for any particular county or state the immigrants' custody status as well as the eventual outcomes for their Immigration Court proceeding. Details on whether the immigrants were represented or not are also available.

Both of these tools use the most recent address recorded in court records for each immigrant. When the individual is detained this is usually the address of the detention facility.

Contrasting Outcomes in Top Five Counties in the Country

There are stark contrasts in the typical outcome reached in Immigration Court cases for immigrants residing in different communities. Figure 1 and Table 1 illustrate these differences for the five counties in the country that had the most court cases completed over the period from October 2000 through February 2018. These five counties were: Los Angeles County (CA), Harris County (TX), Miami-Dade County (FL), Cameron County (TX), and Queens County (NY).

Figure 1. Immigration Court Outcome in Top 5 Counties
(Click for larger image)

Queens County in New York City had the highest proportion of immigrants who were granted relief and the lowest proportion who were ordered removed from the country. An important factor in the success rate for these immigrants is their ability to obtain representation. New York City has a large concentration of immigration attorneys able and willing - often without pay - to represent immigrants. Data show that representation has a very substantial impact on the outcome of immigrants' cases[1].

Cameron County in Texas stands in sharp contrast to Queens County. Even immigrants who were never detained during their court proceedings were rarely represented. Over this entire time period, among those who were never detained, only 1,467 out of 38,708 found representation. However, many others were detained. Cameron County is the home of an important ICE detention facility, the Port Isabel Service Processing Center. Being detained can drastically cut down on a person's odds of obtaining relief, often in substantial part because of the difficulty of obtaining legal representation when the individual is locked up[2].

Los Angeles County in California had the largest number of residents with Immigration Court proceedings during this period. The proportion of immigrants ordered deported was 51 percent, with 15 percent granted relief - ranking in the middle on outcome for these five counties. The odds of representation was roughly half and half, with 52 percent with attorneys. Again, about half (53%) of residents of Queens County were never detained during their court proceedings.

Footnotes