An academic group, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), obtained some alarming data. In over 200,000 cases, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to file the proper paperwork with immigration courts in Houston, Texas and Miami, Florida.
The illegal aliens were issued a Notice to Appear (NTA) at the border, which creates a court date. However, DHS never filed the paperwork with the court. The asylum process can’t move forward without filing the proper paperwork with the court. The court date rolls around and the asylum-seeker shows up. The judge doesn’t have the paperwork so the case is dismissed.
It is hard to believe but more than half of the deportation cases in Houston and Miami – both considered illegal immigration hotbeds – have been dismissed since fiscal year 2021.
“These large numbers of dismissals and what then happens raise serious concerns,” the nonpartisan group, affiliated with Syracuse University, said in its report. The percentage of immigration cases that were dismissed skyrocketed immediately upon President Joe Biden taking office, rising from 0.1% in 2017 and 1.2% in 2019 to 10.6% in 2021.
The percentage of cases dismissed has shrunk since that peak, but with the number of illegal border-crossers at record highs, the actual number of dismissals was far higher in 2022 and 2023 than at any time on record.
So, what happens to the illegal alien when his case is tossed? If it is tossed due to paperwork not being filed with the court, the government can file a new case against the illegal alien. The date released by TRAC, though, shows that in almost 75% of the cases, DHS never bothered to file a new case.
This isn’t a problem that has only happened sometimes. It has happened throughout President Biden’s term. Some cases appear to simply be a clerical error but that mistake is never corrected. For example, in DHS’ Baltimore location, attempts to deport the illegal alien only happened 2% of the time. Three-quarter of those 200,000 cases were left in legal limbo, according to TRAC.
When Joe Biden entered office, he promised the most transparent administrations ever. As with all of his other lies, that promise was not kept. TRAC data experts complain that immigration agencies do not turn over correct information. It is prone to turning over faulty or incomplete information.
“No information to our knowledge has been publicly released by DHS on why and where these problems occur,” it wrote. “Troubling is the 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.”
That’s a really bad look for DHS, especially in today’s political atmosphere. It is a national security risk. Illegal immigration and border security is the top issue for voters. Joe Biden is getting shellacked for his dereliction of duty to keep the homeland safe. A country is not a sovereign nation without borders.
Where are illegal aliens who had their cases dismissed? No one knows. They are like the hundreds of thousands of gotaways who disappear into the country without surrendering to Border Patrol or other law enforcement along the southern border.
Not all cases that go before an immigration judge require a NTA. It is a relatively new development that DHS has access to the court’s scheduling system. The system, the Immigration Court’s Interactive Scheduling System (ISS), allows agents to directly schedule an initial hearing on the master calendar at the Immigration Court when a NTA is issued. This is before the NTA is filed. So, NTAs issued at the border are generally created at the same time that the hearing is scheduled. The asylum-seeker gets a copy of the NTA that includes the scheduled hearing date, time, and location. The trouble happens when DHS fails to file the NTA with the court. Ten years ago this was a rare problem.
In Biden’s America, the southern border is wide open with no hope of securing it any time soon. This chaos is intentional. Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed by the millions of illegal aliens that have crossed the southern border. DHS has not provided adequate personnel or resources at the border. This is Biden’s border crisis.