GAO: One-Third of Immigration Court Aliens are No-Shows
A court system teetering on the brink of disaster
By Andrew R. Arthur on December 30, 2024
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report captioned “Actions Needed to Track and Report Noncitizens’ Hearing Appearances”. The key takeaway related to that title is that 34 percent of alien respondents in immigration court fail to appear at some point during the removal proceeding process. Dig deeper though and you’ll find out a lot more about the sorry state of the immigration-court process — and plenty of room for improvement.
In Absentia Deportations. To put all of this into context, let’s start with section 240 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which governs removal proceedings in immigration court.
Those proceedings are presided over by immigration judges (IJs). It’s a position I held for more than eight years, but I never had to worry about respondents not showing up because I was in the late York Immigration Court, a detained facility in Pennsylvania.
All respondents in detention must appear in court whether they want to or not, so the no-show rate is effectively zero, which needless to say skews the overall rate of what are termed “in absentia” cases.
https://cis.org/Arthur/GAO-OneThird-Immigration-Court-Aliens-are-NoShows
