The courts most friendly to illegal aliens and those that harbor them are the ones that see the most immigration deportation proceedings.
The figures in this article are from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, and cover the Fiscal Year 2016 through July unless otherwise noted. The two most common charges in immigration courts are “entry of alien at improper time or place” and “reentry of deported alien.” Other immigration charges include having false identification and bringing in/harboring an illegal alien.
In Phoenix, New York City, and Honolulu, over 80 percent of individuals in immigration proceedings were allowed to stay in the country. In Denver, Boston, Newark, N.J., Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, over 70 percent of individuals in deportation proceedings got to stay.
The top three courts with the highest amount of immigration deportation procedures were Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco and they are both among the least likely to deport. The most frequent nations of origins of individuals facing immigration charges are El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
Some large active courts do frequently deport, notably Dallas and Houston. These are both in Texas, which is the second most likely state to deport in an immigration proceeding.
Los Angeles and New York also lead the country between October 2013 and July 2016 in immigration cases closed due to prosecutorial discretion. In Los Angeles, 17,749 cases were closed due to prosecutorial discretion during this time period, 13,440 more than New York City. From October 2013 to July 2016, 34.1 percent of immigration cases in Los Angeles were closed due to prosecutorial discretion.
“[Immigration judges] 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,” Jan Ting, professor of law at Temple University, told The Daily Caller. He added prosecutions are brought by the Department of Homeland Security which tries to “implement the same administration policies.”