General Discussion

As deportations have increased under the Obama administration, immigration judges have also increasingly denied requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people who were legitimately entitled to stay in the country, according to new data obtained by Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse.

From July to September of this year, for instance, almost a third of all deportation cases brought by ICE were rejected by immigration judges—up from 12 months earlier, when the rate was one out of every four. According to TRAC, judges have rejected removal orders for more than a quarter of a million individuals in the past five years.

While the judges’ exact reasons remain unclear, records from the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review indicate that many times, immigration officials had either tried to deport the wrong people or requested dismissal because they didn’t have enough evidence to justify deportation. In some cases, judges also granted relief [PDF] because of an individual’s refugee status, a pending application for change of legal status or for some other reason.