U.S. House Republicans are seeking clarification from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding the dismissal of over 200,000 deportation cases.
According to a recent report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, approximately 200,000 deportation cases were dismissed due to the failure of DHS employees or Border Patrol agents to submit the required paperwork to the courts in a timely manner for scheduled hearings.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, along with Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock, a Republican from California, have initiated an investigation this week. In their pursuit of information, they have sent letters to Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and Mary Cheng, the acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).
TRAC researchers conducted an evaluation of data spanning from January 2021 to February 2024 in order to assess the quantity of cases that were dismissed because Notice to Appear (NTA) documents were not filed with courts. One of the policies instituted by Mayorkas, which led to his impeachment, involved altering the detention and removal procedure. As part of this policy, a large number of illegal foreign nationals were released into the country with NTAs and instructed to appear before an immigration court at a date that was several years away.
According to legal requirements, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must submit Notices to Appear (NTAs) to the court specified on them to initiate removal proceedings. Failure to file NTAs means that the removal process does not commence. In instances where a hearing is scheduled before the NTA is filed, the case is dismissed, and a new NTA must be submitted. The report reveals that, out of the evaluated data, NTAs were only refiled in 25% of the cases that were dismissed.
The lack of transparency regarding the location and reasons behind these DHS failures is deeply concerning, according to TRAC researchers.
The individuals also mentioned their inability to acquire information regarding the specific agency responsible for creating and issuing these NTAs. Although they suspect that Border Patrol agents are primarily responsible and that Customs and Border Protection should file them with the court, they are uncertain if the issue is concentrated in that area and if so, which sectors and specific locations are most accountable.
The data reveals that Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, and El Paso experienced the highest number of dismissals.
NTAs are filed by agents from the CBP Office of Field Operations and DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. TRAC stated that DHS has not publicly disclosed any information regarding the reasons and locations where these issues occur.
House Republicans are determined to uncover the truth.
Representatives Jordan and McClintock have written a letter to Mayorkas, expressing their concern about the inaction of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They draw attention to the data from the TRAC report and emphasize that this inaction is worsening the backlog in immigration courts and adding to the chaos of the Biden Administration’s immigration crisis.
The number of deportation case dismissals, around 200,000, due to DHS not filing NTAs, was much higher compared to the reported “failure to prosecute” cases by DHS, which amounted to more than 15,500 between fiscal years 2017 and 2020.
The committee asked Mayorkas to provide documents and information from Jan. 20, 2021, to the present regarding the number of cases that were dismissed by EOIR due to DHS’s failure to prosecute. They also requested information on the number of cases mentioned in the previous question for which DHS eventually filed an NTA, as well as all DHS reports on cases dismissed for failure to prosecute.
The letter to Cheng emphasized the same data and raised similar concerns. They asked her to provide information on the number of cases dismissed by EOIR due to DHS’s failure to prosecute, the number of cases mentioned in question 1 that eventually received an NTA from DHS, and all of EOIR’s Cognos failure to prosecute reports.
The requested material should be provided by April 17, according to the deadline they set.