US

Immigration Courts In Obama Years: Backlog Skyrockets, While Odds Of Deportation Plummet

(John Moore/Getty Images)

Alex Pfeiffer White House Correspondent
Font Size:

Since President Barack Obama has taken office, non-citizens in immigration court face a significantly lower chance of being deported while the backlog in immigration courts has more than doubled.

In Fiscal Year 2009, 76.2 percent of decisions by immigration judges resulted in deportations of non-citizens. In Fiscal Year 2015, that number had fallen to 46.4 percent, and so far in Fiscal Year 2016 the frequency of deportation orders from immigration judges is 42.8 percent. This data and much of the data following in the article is from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Immigration judges are not independent Article 3 federal judges. They are civil servants who report to the attorney general. “As such, they to different degrees come to understand what their supervisors want and expect in enforcing both the laws and the policies of the Department. The administration wants fewer deportations, except in the case of the most violent criminals, and that’s more and more understood by immigration judges,” Professor Jan Ting, a professor of immigration law at Temple University, told The Daily Caller.

The Obama administration in November 2014 enacted the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which prioritized deporting violent illegal aliens instead of ones who had committed immigration crimes only.

The number of immigrants that ICE has sought to deport and yet were allowed to stay has more than doubled since Obama took office. In FY 2009, 57,474 immigrants who ICE sought to deport were allowed to stay after immigration court proceedings. This number is projected to be 116,823 in FY 2016.

Immigrants who have been caught crossing the border illegally are housed inside the McAllen Border Patrol Station in McAllen, Texas, in this file photo taken July 15, 2014. REUTERS/ Rick Loomis/Pool/Files

Immigrants who have been caught crossing the border illegally are housed inside the McAllen Border Patrol Station in McAllen, Texas, in this file photo taken July 15, 2014. REUTERS/ Rick Loomis/Pool/Files

While the PEP program is supposed to prioritize the deportation of public safety risks, Syracuse University figures show only 7.9 percent of removal filings in immigration courts so far in FY 2016 have been based on “alleged criminal activity.” This number was 16 percent in FY 2009.

The Syracuse data also shows that the backlog of cases in immigration courts has increased from 223,809 cases in Fiscal Year 2009 to 496,704 cases in Fiscal Year 2016. Twenty-nine percent of these cases involve either illegal unaccompanied minor immigrants or “women with children.”

“Prosecutions are brought by the Department of Homeland Security, which tries to implement the same administration policies, but still has some residual understanding of their responsibilities as prosecutors.  Not surprising that prosecutors have a slightly tougher interpretation of those policies than immigration judges,” Professor Ting told TheDC.

Ting told TheDC, “I think the rising backlogs are to some extent the function of high levels of illegal immigration, some portion of which engages in criminal activity attracting prosecutorial attention.”

There are currently 272 immigration judges facing over 490,000 cases.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel