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.
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