News/Commentary

‘Troubling’: Nearly 200,000 deportation cases THROWN OUT because Biden admin neglected paperwork

March 21, 2024 | | Print Article

The Biden administration dropped the ball once again, failing to file paperwork prior to court hearings for roughly 200,000 illegal immigrant deportation cases resulting in them being thrown out.

A report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse contends that the Department of Homeland Security didn’t bother to file the necessary Notice to Appear paperwork before court dates in 200,000 cases. That resulted in the cases being dismissed. It is unknown whether it was intentional or sheer incompetence by DHS.

“The failure left courts without the jurisdiction to handle deportation cases and rule on asylum claims and left migrants in ‘limbo’ and unable to work,” the Daily Mail reported.

“The report says it is ‘troubling’ as there is an ‘almost total lack of transparency on where and why these DHS failures occurred’, it adds: ‘These large numbers of dismissals and what then happens raises serious concerns,'” the media outlet added.

The failure on the part of the Biden administration and DHS to file the paperwork could “potentially extend the time and difficulties that individuals, and their families, face in securing food, shelter, and other essentials.”

As illegal immigrants have entered the country, Team Biden, led by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, has assigned them a hearing date years down the road where they will explain to an immigration judge why they should be allowed to remain in the country. The migrants are given a Notice to Appear (NTA) but a copy has to be filed with the court by DHS for the case to be heard.

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“The number of times an NTA wasn’t filed, leading to a case being thrown out, jumped when Biden came to office, according to the new report. Their analysis found 6,482 cases were dismissed after an NTA wasn’t filed on time in 2020 compared to 33,802 in 2021,” the Daily Mail noted.

“The numbers then jumped again to 79,592 in 2022 before falling to 68,869 in 2023. The numbers are much higher as a percentage of total cases under Biden too,” the media outlet continued.

“Between 2014 and 2020, less than 1 percent of deportation cases were dismissed as a result of NTAs not being filed with courts, whereas in Biden’s first three years in office, it was 8.4 percent of cases,” the Daily Mail wrote.

The scathing report slammed DHS authorities for their inaction.

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“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 asserts.

According to the analysis, the egregious mistake where NTAs were not filed with immigration courts by DHS was only rectified in one in four illegal immigrant cases.

“One possible explanation for the jump is Border Patrol agents and other personnel being given authority to schedule immigration hearings on their own,” the Daily Mail claimed.

“Ten years ago, DHS’s failure to file an NTA before the scheduled first hearing was rare. However, the frequency increased once Border Patrol and other DHS personnel were given access to the Immigration Court’s Interactive Scheduling System (ISS),” the report contended.

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The report goes on to provide further cover for DHS while still condemning the Biden agency.

“DHS’s relatively recent access to the Court’s scheduling system created a new administrative problem: DHS employees could schedule Immigration Court hearings sooner than the agency could file the NTA, and this could have negative consequences for both the Immigration Court and the immigrant respondents themselves,” it stated attempting to explain away DHS’ ineptitude, or more likely, malfeasance in the matter.

“With Immigration Judges staring down 3.5 million pending immigration cases, every wasted hearing is a hearing that could have moved another case forward or resolved it,” the report concluded.

Users on X were disgusted by the report:

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