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New Immigration Court Cases
About This Indicator
What Are New Immigration Court Cases?
New cases opened in the immigration courts each federal fiscal year, from the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review: mostly cases in which the government asks a judge to order someone removed from the country, along with a few narrower ones that decide only asylum or protection from being sent back. Since fiscal 1989, leaving out the office's first years, from 1983, when its records show a system still filling in.
Why Does It Matter?
It is where arrests at the border and inside the country turn into a legal process: the government files a case, a judge hears it, and many people ask for asylum there. Each year's new cases become years of waiting when the courts cannot keep up, which shapes where people live and work while they wait.
Can Politics Influence It?
Heavily. The Department of Homeland Security decides whom to charge and whether a case goes to a judge at all, and Presidents set those priorities. Quick removals at the border and the pandemic's Title 42 expulsions bypassed the courts, which is why fiscal 2021, a year of heavy border crossings, opened fewer than half as many cases as fiscal 2019.
Key Idea
The count measures the government's charging decisions as much as migration itself. More cases can mean more people arriving or more enforcement against people already here, and fewer can mean fewer arrivals or more people turned back without ever seeing a judge.
Not Scored
Source: Justice Department (Executive Office for Immigration Review). Adjudication Statistics, New Cases and Total Completions - Historical, initial receipts.
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