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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. Preliminary figures based upon case-by-case court records as of the end of September 2017 indicate that the number of DHS issued NTAs (notices to appear) initiating proceedings in Immigration Court is substantially down since President Trump took office. This is surprising since ICE states that its apprehensions were up during this same period.
There were also increasing delays at DHS before NTAs, once issued, were actually filed in Immigration Court. This backlog of un-filed NTAs helped obscure the fall in Trump-initiated cases. Over 75,000 DHS filings in court after January 20, 2017 actually were of deportation cases begun under the Obama administration.
Despite the drop in court filings, and the hiring of 74 additional immigration judges over the past year, the court backlog also increased by 113,020 cases during FY 2017 – most of it since President Trump assumed office. As of the end of September 2017 the Immigration Court backlog has grown to 629,051 cases.
These and other findings are based upon very current case-by-case court records that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
For the full report, go to:
http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/487/
In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through September 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
David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563″
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The Trump Administration is good at “obfuscation of data.” Seems like the upcoming appearance of EOIR Acting Director James McHenry before the House Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee on Wednesday, November 1, would be a good time for legislators to start asking some tough questions about how resources are being used (or not) at EOIR and why U.S. Immigration Judges were detailed, at Government expense, to locations where they had insufficient cases to keep busy while leaving jam-packed dockets behind.
They might also be curious as to how EOIR could be requesting a dramatic increase in Immigration Judges when additional positions allocated by Congress several years ago remain unfilled and, according to a recent GAO Report, Immigration Judge hiring has taken an average of two years (yet most of those hired are already on the government payroll and in jobs requiring full background checks).
They also might want to get an accounting for the continuation of the DOJ/EOIR practice of Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) which “jacks up” backlogs while denying many due process of law.
PWS
10-30-17