Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED, via Flickr, Cropped by Resist the Mainstream

Immigration judges have dismissed deportation cases against approximately 200,000 migrants under President Biden due to the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) failure to file necessary paperwork before their scheduled court appearances, as revealed in a recent report.

According to a report released Wednesday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, the failure of the DHS to file thousands of notices to appear before scheduled hearing dates deprived courts of jurisdiction to handle deportation cases and adjudicate asylum claims.

The report expressed serious concerns about the significant number of dismissals and the lack of transparency regarding the reasons and locations of these DHS failures.

Notices to appear (NTAs) are issued when migrants are apprehended illegally crossing the US border. Migrants claiming asylum are assigned hearing dates, often years in advance, to present their case to an immigration judge. For the hearing to proceed, the NTA must also be filed with the court where the individual is directed to appear.

Between 2014 and 2020, less than 1% of deportation cases were dismissed due to missing NTAs. In Biden’s first three years in office, however, this figure rose to 8.4%.

TRAC's findings revealed that DHS rectifies dismissals for only 1-in-4 migrants where NTAs were not filed with immigration courts. Additionally, nearly 2,000 cases saw the second NTA filed with the court late.

The TRAC report highlighted the surge in cases dismissed due to missing NTAs since Biden's inauguration, with numbers rising from 6,482 in 2020 to 33,802 in 2021.

The figure peaked at 79,592 in 2022 before declining to 68,869 in 2023, and so far in 2024, 10,598 deportation cases have been dismissed for this reason.

TRAC suggested that the issue might stem from Border Patrol agents and other DHS personnel being granted authority to schedule immigration hearings independently, leading to scheduling hearings before NTAs are filed.

The report highlighted Houston and Miami immigration courts as significant contributors to the problem, with over 50% of deportation cases dismissed since 2021 due to missing NTAs.