On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement released an interim report titled “Quiet Amnesty: How the Biden-Harris Administration Uses the Nation’s Immigration Courts to Advance An Open-Borders Agenda.” The report details how the Biden-Harris Administration has exploited immigration court proceedings, allowing nearly 1 million illegal aliens to remain in the U.S. indefinitely.
Through administrative maneuvering, the Biden-Harris Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security have caused the immigration court backlog to skyrocket, adding over 3.7 million new cases since fiscal year 2021. In the first three quarters of fiscal year 2024 alone, the immigration courts saw more than 1.5 million new cases filed. Most of these cases are based on claims that ultimately prove unsuccessful. In fiscal year 2023, only 14 percent of adjudicated asylum cases resulted in grants, while the rest were denied, abandoned, dismissed, terminated, or administratively closed. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, over 700,000 illegal aliens have had their cases dismissed, terminated, or administratively closed, and the pace of these actions has increased each year, allowing those aliens to stay in the country indefinitely without facing immigration consequences.
The Biden-Harris Administration has used the backlog as an excuse to allow even more aliens to remain in America. Instead of adjudicating cases based on the merits of their claims—such as valid asylum requests—immigration judges have rubberstamped dismissals, terminations, and closures. This quiet amnesty has become a hallmark of the Biden-Harris Administration’s immigration courts.
The Committee and the Subcommittee will continue their aggressive oversight of the Biden-Harris Administration’s open-borders policies to inform legislative reforms aimed at ending these policies and restoring law and order to the immigration system.
Read the full interim staff report here.
