Immigration Court No-Shows Increase as Backlog Falls and Asylum Denials Rise
Expect the trends to continue, if not accelerate
By Andrew R. Arthur on August 20, 2025
Last month, I reported based on preliminary figures that the backlog of pending cases in the immigration courts had fallen for the first time in 18 years, as the second Trump administration’s lockdown of the Southwest border slowed new cases added to immigration judges’ dockets to a trickle. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) — the DOJ component that oversees the courts — has now updated the rest of its statistics, and they reveal that immigration court no-shows are up and asylum denials are, too. Expect these trends to continue, if not accelerate.
“In Absentia Removal Orders”
Aliens in removal proceedings before immigration judges are denominated “respondents”, and those respondents must appear at all their hearings or run the risk of being ordered removed from the United States in absentia.
There’s a big difference between being “ordered removed” (in absentia or at the end of proceedings) and actually being deported, of course, but removal orders are a “condition precedent”, in that ICE officers must secure one before they can deport an alien respondent.
In the first three quarters of FY 2025 (October 1, 2024, through the end of June), immigration judges issued more than 340,000 removal orders in cases that commenced with the filing of a Notice to Appear (“NTA”, the charging document in removal proceedings), and nearly 63.5 percent (216,000-plus) of those removal orders were issued in absentia, when respondents failed to appear.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Immigration-Court-NoShows-Increase-Backlog-Falls-and-Asylum-Denials-Rise
