Texas immigration courts order deportations at much higher rate than nation, according to TRAC

Published: December 19, 2014 4:26 pm
DIANNE SOLÍS



Immigrants in Texas immigration courts stand a 71 percent of being ordered deported, compared to about a 55 percent rate for the nation, according to a fresh report this Friday from a Syracuse University research center.

Dallas immigration courts are particularly tough with 82 percent of those there getting removal or deportations orders, says the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC. Houston is tougher at 92 percent and San Antonio much less so at 38 percent.

And that brings one to the report’s central point: There’s wide variation in deportation orders from court to court among the nation’s 225 or so judges. The federal immigration courts are also granting a greater proportion of the deportation orders that are requested by the government in the first two months of the 2015 fiscal year.

On average, deportation orders were granted about half the time in the last fiscal year, ended Sept. 30, and, in Texas, such removals were granted at a lower rate of 66 percent. Texas has been a tough-on-immigrants venue for years, TRAC data shows. New York state, by comparison, has been more lenient for the last decade.

The report is especially noteworthy as the largest investigative unit in the sprawling U.S. Department of Homeland Security will be headed by a Dallas attorney come next week. That would Sarah Saldaña, currently the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, takes the helm at the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement, or ICE. Saldaña, an SMU law school grad, now leads a staff of about 220. At ICE, she’ll lead more than 20,000 employees.

Immigration judges report to the Executive Office of Immigration Review within the Justice Department, not ICE. ICE is responsible for initiating a removal proceeding by filing a charging document, or notice to appear in any of the nation’s immigration courts.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, TRAC exhumes and analyzes data from a wide variety of government agencies, especially those known for less transparency.

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