Reps. Jim Jordan and Tom McClintock wrote a letter suggesting that President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is failing to file necessary paperwork to initiate deportation proceedings for hundreds of thousands of migrants released into the U.S.
Specifically, DHS has not filed Notices to Appear (NTA) in around 200,000 cases since Biden took office, resulting in their dismissal from immigration courts for “failure to prosecute,” compared to only 15,546 such dismissals from 2017-2020.
“According to a recent report, since the beginning of the Biden Administration, immigration judges have dismissed roughly 200,000 cases after DHS failed to file an alien’s NTA with an immigration court,” Jordan and McClintock wrote.
#BREAKING: DHS failed to file summonses for over 200,000 illegal aliens with the immigration courts, resulting in massive case dismissals.
Now these illegal aliens are roaming the streets without accountability.
The latest from Chairmen @Jim_Jordan & @RepMcClintock here: pic.twitter.com/fJcMLrFqGy
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) April 3, 2024
By not filing NTAs, DHS prevents deportation cases from legally beginning.
This backlogs immigration courts and leaves migrants in “legal limbo.”
“For aliens in the United States, including those encountered at the border, generally the filing of an NTA begins the process to potentially remove the alien from the country. Because an alien’s removal proceedings do not begin until DHS ‘files [the NTA] with the immigration court after it is served on [the alien],’ DHS’s failure to file NTAs has resulted in hundreds of thousands of case dismissals under the Biden administration for DHS’s failure to prosecute,” they wrote.
Jordan and McClintock asked DHS Secretary Mayorkas to provide data on case dismissals due to missed NTA filings and subsequent filings.
They expressed concern this inaction exacerbates the nation’s growing immigration court backlog, now over 3 million cases, as most migrants lack valid asylum claims and eligibility for deportation.
“‘In comparison, there were only 15,546 dismissals for failure to prosecute from fiscal year 2017 through fiscal year 2020.’ Meanwhile, the Biden Administration’s DHS has subsequently filed an NTA in only a quarter of cases that were dismissed. As the report notes, DHS’s inaction ‘block[s] off [immigration courts’] valuable limited time by scheduling hearings for cases that do not legally exist’ and leaves aliens in ‘legal limbo,'” they added.
“The Committee is concerned with DHS’s inaction, which exacerbates the nation’s already backlogged immigration courts and creates additional chaos in the Biden Administration’s immigration crisis,” they wrote.
