The House Judiciary Committee released a 16-page report Thursday revealing that more than 700,000 migrants have had their immigration cases dismissed, terminated, or administratively closed as the US grapples with an overwhelming surge at the southern border under the progressive administration.
In addition, the Department of Homeland Security failed to even file the necessary documentation
to begin immigration court removal proceedings in roughly 200,000 cases, the report found.
“Through administrative maneuvering at both the Justice Department and DHS, the Biden-Harris Administration has already ensured that nearly 1 million illegal aliens can remain in the United States without the possibility of deportation — and that trend shows no sign of stopping,” the Republican-led committee said.
“This sort of quiet amnesty has become a staple of the Biden-Harris Administration’s immigration courts.”
The data compiled by the House committee — which tracked immigration cases between Jan. 20, 2021, and June 30, 2024 — found that the vast majority of the migrants had their cases dismissed, with a total of 459,356 cases dismissed over the almost four-year period.
Meanwhile, 172,645 were terminated and 71,465 cases were administratively closed.
That is a whopping 575% increase from the more than 104,000 migrants who had their cases dismissed, terminated or administratively closed under the Trump administration, according to a Post analysis of data.
Just 90,692 immigration cases were terminated under former President Donald Trump’s term, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. That figure also includes those cases that were dismissed, as the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review didn’t split the two categories prior to the Harris-Biden administration.
An additional 13,590 were administratively closed under Trump, according to data obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.
Over 85% of the record-breaking number of asylum seekers apprehended crossing the besieged southern border under the Harris-Biden administration were being released into the US pending immigration hearings, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted in January.
Roughly 700 immigration judges then oversee the sprawling EOIR migrant docket, which hit an all-time high of more than 3 million backlogged cases as of December 2023.
As a result, Attorney General Merrick Garland — who was appointed by President Biden — restored the policy of “administrative closure” in July 2021 by reversing Trump-era restrictions. He argued that the decision would let judges focus on “higher-priority cases.”
An April 3, 2022, memo authored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Principal Legal Advisor Kerry Doyle also pointed to the backlog to argue for the closure of all cases that don’t pose a threat to national security, public safety or border security.
This meant that DHS lawyers would be able to decline to file a “Notice to Appear” for immigration cases or swiftly kick the so-called “nonpriority cases” off the docket.
Former EOIR Director David Neal also put his thumb on the scale in a memo urging judges to side with agency lawyers who push for migrant case dismissals.
The culmination of these policies and guidance has now left hundreds of thousands of migrants in legal limbo as the dismissals do not provide them with documentation.
However, the asylum seekers are still able to stay in the US “indefinitely without facing immigration consequences” because it also means they have not been put into deportation proceedings, according to the House panel report.
Former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy had forced most migrants to await their immigration court hearings south of the US border, reducing border crossing by as much as 70%, border officials say.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told The Post last week that he had begged Biden to reinstate the program — but the commander-in-chief refused.
“‘It’s complicated,’” he said, according to Johnson (R-La.). “‘Mexico doesn’t want that.’”
But as the crisis at the border spiraled, Biden was forced to reverse course in June and issued an executive order to temporarily close the border when migrant crossings exceeded 2,500 per day over a week-long period.
The order would still allow for as many as 1.8 million migrants to come into the country via other paths — including the Harris-Biden humanitarian parole process, which congressional Republicans have argued is an abuse of the system.
Still, border encounters have since plummeted 55% and DHS has touted the removal of more than 700,000 migrants in fiscal year 2024 — its highest figure since 2010 under former President Barack Obama.
Voters in the seven critical swing states — Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia — have consistently listed immigration as one of their top concerns in the 2024 election.
Trump is seen as “best able to handle” illegal immigration by the voters, besting Harris by a 16-point margin (52% to 36%), a Wall Street Journal survey in October found.
In a CNN town hall Wednesday night, Democratic presidential nominee Harris acknowledged that many more immigration judges were needed to hear cases — but stressed that her and Biden did “the right thing” on the border.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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