(12 Sep 2014) Immigration Court judges have ordered 82,878 individuals deported so far this fiscal year, according to the latest data as of the end of August. But in only 16,375 of these cases, about one out of every five, had the government sought the removal order because of criminal or other activity that posed a threat to public safety; the remainder involved various immigration charges.
These new filings contribute to a workload that already outstrips the capacity of the limited number of Immigration Court judges. As a result, the court’s backlog of cases awaiting hearing has increased to 408,037 as of the end of August.
So far this fiscal year, deportation was ordered in just over half (50.2 percent) of Immigration Court dispositions. The highest percentage of deportation orders were issued by immigration courts in Georgia (77.4 percent) and Louisiana (75.4 percent). The lowest proportion of deportation orders this year were issued by the courts in Oregon (25.8 percent) and New York (30.0 percent).