Immigration judges dismissed deportation cases against some 200,000 migrants under President Biden because the Department of Homeland Security failed to file the required paperwork before their court dates, according to a new report.
The DHS’s failure to file thousands of notices to appear before scheduled hearing dates left courts without jurisdiction to handle deportation cases and rule on asylum claims, according to a report released Wednesday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
“These large numbers of dismissals and what then happens raise serious concerns,” the TRAC report, which includes data through February 2024, states.
The nonpartisan research organization called it “troubling” that there was an “almost total lack of transparency on where and why these DHS failures occurred.”
“Equally troubling is the lack of solid information on what happened to these many immigrants when DHS never rectified its failure by reissuing and filing new NTAs to restart their Court cases,” the report notes.
Notices to appear, or NTAs, are issued when migrants are apprehended illegally crossing the border into the US.
Migrants claiming asylum are assigned a hearing date — often years in advance — where they are offered the opportunity to explain to an immigration judge why they shouldn’t be deported.
But the NTA must also be filed with the court where the individual is told to appear for the hearing to take place.
“Almost all Immigration Court cases are removal cases for which DHS must file an NTA for the case to go forward,” the TRAC report explains.
Cases dismissed because of NTAs not being filed jumped when Biden took office, from 6,482 in 2020 to 33,802 in 2021.
The amount of no NTAs ballooned to 79,592 in 2022 before falling t0 68,869 in 2023.
So far in 2024, 10,598 deportation cases have been dismissed because of no NTAs, according to the report.
Between 2014 and 2020, less than 1% of deportation cases were dismissed because of NTAs not being filed with courts.
In Biden’s first three years in office, that figure was 8.4% of cases.
TRAC found that DHS only rectifies dismissals for 1-in-4 migrants where NTAs were not filed with immigration courts, and that on nearly 2,000 occasions the second NTA was also filed with the court late.
The report noted that immigration courts in Houston and Miami were “clear standouts” in not having NTAs on file in time, with 50% or more of their deportation cases dismissed since 2021 because of no NTAs.
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).”
“DHS’s relatively recent access to the Court’s scheduling system created a new administrative problem: DHS employees could schedule Immigration Court hearings sooner than the agency could file the NTA, and this could have negative consequences for both the Immigration Court and the immigrant respondents themselves,” TRAC found. “Indeed, this is what happened.”
“With Immigration Judges staring down 3.5 million pending immigration cases, every wasted hearing is a hearing that could have moved another case forward or resolved it.”
The Syracuse University-based group notes that the DHS mishaps cause headaches for migrants with legitimate asylum claims as well.
“Until a formal asylum petition is filed, asylum seekers cannot generally obtain work permits,” the report states.
“These dismissals therefore potentially extend the time and difficulties that individuals, and their families, face in securing food, shelter and other essentials while waiting for a work permit. Indeed, the lack of clarity about their case may only add to their sense of legal limbo rather than alleviate it.”
DHS did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
