Putting TRAC to Work
  Policy and Public Interest Groups
FAIR
March 2, 2023

Immigration Courts Are Working Faster, And Getting Further Behind


During the first four months of fiscal year 2023, case closures totaled 172,180, 85 percent higher than the same period of 2019, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Meantime, new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filings in Immigration Court are up even more. The court is on pace this year to receive nearly 1 million new Notices to Appear (NTAs) seeking to get immigrants in front of a judge. In fact, the NTA figures are understated and case closures are inflated. As TRAC explains: “One out of every six new cases DHS initiates are now being dismissed because Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers are not filing the actual NTA with the court. These have clearly contributed to the rise in the number of case completions.” TRAC goes on to say: “The biggest growth in closures can be seen in three key areas: the much higher numbers of cases that are terminated, the higher number of cases in which the government never filed an NTA to begin with, and the return of the use of administrative closure or prosecutorial discretion to close a case that is not a priority for deportation.”


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Copyright 2023
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