More and more deportation cases are dismissed by immigration courts, but this is not good news, because they are due to an error about sending the “Notice of Appearance” (NTA, in English) and that can affect immigrants.
The failure is about new cases initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in court and due to failures of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials, who do not confirm that the NTA is sent and, therefore, the cases “do not exist”.
“This failure is an excessive waste of the Court’s time”, says the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), when reporting the problem. “It’s also problematic for the immigrant (and possibly their attorney) if they show up at the hearings and the immigration judge dismisses the case, because the case hasn’t actually come before the court.”
These cases were found through the latest court records obtained and analyzed TRAC at Syracuse University through a series of Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests.
Miami leads with this problem by adding 7,700 of the total of 9,492 cases completed during the fiscal year 2022, or 81 percent of errors.
The report adds that CBP processes with immigration courts would seem to speed up the scheduling and hearing of cases, but without due process with the NTA that is not happening.
Among the cities that report this problem the most are Houston with 54 percent of cases, Miami with 43 percent and Chicago with 26 percent.
“Ten years ago, this failure to file an NTA was rare,” says TRAC.
The problem arises when Border Patrol agents use the Immigration Court’s Interactive Scheduling System (ISS).
“Using ISS, agents can directly schedule the initial hearing (that is, a master calendar hearing) in the Immigration Court”, it is explained.
Although when originating an NTA and delivering it to the immigrant with an appointment date and time in the court, the system does not send an actual copy to the court, so that appointment is not actually scheduled.
“The failure to do this suggests that there is a serious disconnect between CBP agents entering new cases and scheduling hearings through the Court’s ISS system and other CBP personnel responsible to send a copy to the Court”, it is warned.