U.S. immigration courts are on pace to decide record numbers of deportation cases — and order the most removals in five years — under President Biden's push to fast-track asylum decisions. The increases in the first two months of fiscal 2025, if they continue, will help reduce a backlog of 3.7 million immigration cases that could take four years to resolve, Axios reports. Biden's fast-track system — in which immigration judges are hearing and ruling on asylum requests in minutes — stands to be overrun by President-elect Trump's plan for mass deportations. Without significant increases in immigration court personnel and other resources for asylum claims, Trump's plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants could create decades-long backlogs in immigration courts.
Immigration courts are on pace to rule on 852,000 deportation cases from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025, according to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. If the pace of court rulings in October and November, the first two months of the government's fiscal 2025, continues, immigration judges will rule on more deportation cases in 2025 than in any previous year. So far in fiscal 2025, immigration judges have ordered removals or voluntary departures in 45% of the cases that came before them — up from 39% in 2024 and the highest rate since 2020. That means immigration courts are on pace to issue 383,400 orders for removals or voluntary departures in FY 2025. Only 0.7% of the most recent cases sought deportation orders based on any alleged crimes by an immigrant, apart from allegedly entering the U.S. illegally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 271,000 people last fiscal year — the most in nearly a decade. There has been a 90% increase in deportations from 2023, even as Republicans assailed Biden as weak on the border during the presidential campaign. Most of the nation's 734 immigration judges are seeking to reinstate their union ahead of the expected boom in cases once Trump launches his plan for mass deportations. The Trump-controlled Federal Labor Relations Authority stripped away the judges' union in 2020. The two sides could be headed for another legal showdown.
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