A staggering number of over 200,000 illegal immigrants have had their deportation cases dismissed as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reportedly failed to file necessary legal documents in a timely manner.
This information comes from a recent report published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, according to New York Post.
The TRAC report, released on Wednesday and including data through February 2024, highlights a systemic issue where thousands of notices to appear (NTAs) have not been filed with immigration courts ahead of the migrants’ scheduled hearings, rendering the courts unable to proceed with deportation cases and rule on asylum claims.
“These large numbers of dismissals and what then happens raise serious concerns,” the report emphasizes, calling out the “almost total lack of transparency” on the part of DHS regarding the reason behind these failures.
NTAs are critical documents in the immigration process, marking the start of formal proceedings after migrants are apprehended for illegally entering the United States.
Illegal immigrants are given a hearing date, which can be years in the future, to make their case for asylum before an immigration judge. However, for these hearings to take place, the NTA must be officially filed with the court—a step that has been notably missed in a large number of cases.
The report sheds light on the significant increase in NTA filing omissions after Joe Biden took office.
In 2020, 6,482 cases were dismissed due to missing NTAs, a figure that rose to 33,802 in 2021 and further surged to 79,592 in 2022. The TRAC report notes a slight decrease to 68,869 dismissals in 2023 and 10,598 so far in 2024.
Compared to the period between 2014 and 2020, when less than 1% of deportation cases were dismissed for lack of NTAs, the first three years of the Biden regime saw an alarming 8.4% dismissal rate for the same reason, according to The Post.
According to TRAC’s findings, DHS only manages to correct the issue for one in four migrants affected by the problem, with nearly 2,000 cases experiencing a second late filing of NTAs.
The report identifies immigration courts in Houston and Miami as having particularly high rates of dismissals due to this issue, exceeding 50% of cases since 2021.
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TRAC suggests that the problem may lie in Border Patrol agents and other DHS personnel being given authority to schedule immigration hearings on their own.
“Ten years ago, DHS’s failure to file an NTA before the scheduled first hearing was rare,” the report said. “However, the frequency increased once Border Patrol and other DHS personnel were given access to the Immigration Court’s Interactive Scheduling System (ISS).”