According to recent data from TRAC, 80% of all immigration court deportation orders are due to immigration offenses. So far this fiscal year, Immigration Court judges have ordered 82,878 individuals deported. However, in only 16,375 of cases were the removals ordered because of criminal or other activity that might pose a threat to public safety. All other removals, four out of five, were ordered due to immigration charges.
According to TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse based out of Syracuse University, these new filings continue to contribute to workloads that outstrip the capacity of the government’s Immigration Court judges. The court’s backlog of cases awaiting hearing, as of August 2014, was 408,037.