On Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (R-CA) sent letters to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) Acting Director Mary Cheng demanding information on DHS’s failure to file Notices to Appear (NTAs) with immigration courts, which has led to mass dismissals of alien cases under the Biden Administration.
Excerpts of the letter to DHS Secretary Mayorkas:
“According to a recent report, since the beginning of the Biden Administration, immigration judges have dismissed roughly 200,000 cases after DHS failed to file an alien’s NTA with an immigration court. For aliens in the United States, including those encountered at the border, generally the filing of an NTA begins the process to potentially remove the alien from the country. Because an alien’s removal proceedings do not begin until DHS ‘files [the NTA] with the immigration court after it is served on [the alien],’ DHS’s failure to file NTAs has resulted in hundreds of thousands of case dismissals under the Biden Administration for DHS’s ‘failure to prosecute.’ In comparison, there were only 15,546 dismissals for failure to prosecute from fiscal year 2017 through fiscal year 2020. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration’s DHS has subsequently filed an NTA in only a quarter of cases that were dismissed. As the report notes, DHS’s inaction ‘block[s] off [immigration courts’] valuable limited time by scheduling hearings for cases that do not legally exist’ and leaves aliens in ‘legal limbo.’
“The Committee is concerned with DHS’s inaction, which exacerbates the nation’s already backlogged immigration courts and creates additional chaos in the Biden Administration’s immigration crisis. Accordingly, to assist the Committee with its continued oversight of federal immigration policy and procedures, we ask that you provide the following documents and information from January 20, 2021, to the present:
1. The number of cases the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) dismissed for DHS’s failure to prosecute;
2. The number of cases described in question 1 for which DHS eventually filed an NTA; and
3. All DHS reports on cases dismissed for failure to prosecute.”
Read the full letter to DHS Secretary Mayorkas here.
Read the full letter to EOIR Acting Director Cheng here.
