I’ve seen a lot of statistics thrown around about the number of people who fail to show up at deportation hearings. I’ve already cited a New York Times article finding that the number of no-shows was between 20 and 40%. I’ve found articles from the Washington Post and Miami Herald reporting the same things. I’ll cite the Executive Summary of a study from the Center for Immigration Studies in full:
U.S. immigration enforcement and adjudication are failing. American immigration courts have the highest failure to appear rates of any courts in the country. Over the last 20 years, 37 percent of all aliens free pending trial failed to appear for their hearings. From the 2,498,375 foreign nationals outside detention during their court proceedings, 1,219,959 were ordered removed, 75 percent of them (918,098) for failing to appear. Only 25 percent of this group — some 301,861 people — actually litigated their claims. Trial courts are three times more likely to issue removal orders for failure to appear than removal orders based upon the merits of fully litigated claims. Nearly 46,000 people each year disappeared from court. Deportation orders for failure to appear are the largest group of orders issued by immigration courts outside detention facilities. From 1996 through 2015, removal orders for failure to appear numbered 918,098. Among those who absconded from court were 3,095 aliens from the 36 countries that promote terrorism. A disproportionate number — 338 altogether — came from those countries the U.S. State Department labels state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Sudan, and Syria. As populations from countries that promote terrorism have increased since 9/11 — from naturalized citizens, immigrants,3 and refugees — plots and acts of Islam-inspired terrorism have also increased, more than twice as many under Barack Obama than under George W. Bush. Unexecuted removal orders now number 953,506 — a 58 percent increase since 2002. An average of 25,107 unexecuted orders of removal were added each year through 2015.
Practical reforms that serve America’s age-old immigration world view — to attract the talented, redeem the persecuted, and remove the offender — are needed now, perhaps more than ever in our history, as a remedy for policies that have diminished the deserving, emboldened the suspect, and rewarded the violator.
That’s a far cry from the 90% quoted by AG Jeff Sessions but it’s not negligible, either.
Some of the confusion arises from there being multiple kinds of hearings and various kinds of cases. So, for example, there are both deportation hearings and asylum hearings, two different things. And then there are the millions of unapprehended illegal immigrants who’ve never had any sort of hearing.
But I think that the 37% figure is a pretty reasonable guess for the percentage of no-noshows.
In state criminal matters, one-third of those released pending trial will either not appear or will commit a crime in the interim (much more likely the former). This is the group that the legal system deems to be at low risk, otherwise they would not have been released on their own recognizance or by posting bail. People released on their own recognizance fail to appear 24% of the time.
People released by court order due to over-crowding (not common) fail to appear 52% of the time. People released on an unsecured bond (they don’t actually post a bond, but agree to pay the bond amount if they fail to appear do not appear) will not appear 30% of the time.
The reason for non-appearance range from strategic gaming of the system when they know they are unlikely to be captured to stupid mistakes made by people who don’t navigate systems very well. I would assume the same characteristics are true in immigration, so a range of 24% to 52% seems probable.
Data: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/prfdsc.pdf
I think the 99% figure that’s frequently mentioned is for asylum hearings. And that makes perfect sense – people will show to see if they have a shot at asylum. What I haven’t seen is what happens when asylum is not granted and if there is a deportation hearing after that.
I think the 99% figure came from the reports on one specific group, the Family Case Management Program administered by ICE until 2017.
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2017/0609/ICE-shutters-helpful-family-management-program-amid-budget-cuts
Asylum seekers are different and they were the group mostly affected by the change Trump made. As Andy said they are motivated to show up at hearings.
Steve
I don’t know whether they are different or whether they were different. The number of Central American asylum-seekers has jumped from about 25,000 per year to over 130,000 per year since 2016. Since most of those are still at some stage of the process, there’s no way to tell how many are legitimate and will ultimately be honored and how many will be rejected. Can we really extrapolate from 25,000 to 130,000 with confidence?
Note that I’m not saying that I know one way or another. I’m suggesting that nobody knows.
I think with the large increase in numbers of families arriving seeking asylum, the program was either going to become very costly or it would fail to reproduce those high levels of compliance, or both. It seems like the type of program that works for a very targeted group (which probably should continue for that group) but not when extrapolated to the whole.
Opponents of catch and release claim that the cartels and coyotes are exploiting the situation, distracting the border agents to facilitate drug smuggling and profiting from the smuggling of children (some for legitimate reasons by their parents and some for trafficking.) And that’s above and beyond the simple moral hazard of increasing parents’ expectations of the possibility of asylum, so whatever system we’ve had (poorly functioning as it is) is completely overwhelmed by the increased numbers of people.
@Dave, I think we know the rate enough for policy purposes.
In the period between July 18, 2014 and May 26, 2015, we have the following numbers:
25,732 adults with children were released on their own recognizance;
12,441 adults with children had their cases completed
10,436 adults with children had their cases completed for not showing-up.
So, basically, during that period 83.8 percent of cases were resolved as no-shows. I think that’s a lot and the numbers from the source below are from a pro-immigration group. They think the number should be closer to 40.6% (10,436 / 25,732), which still strikes me as high.
The only mitigating issue to me is that these numbers also show there is a significant backlog. I would assume the lengthier and more complicated the process, the more likely there is an appearance problem.
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/MythvFact-Immigrant-Families.pdf
I also wonder what the relative importance of lack of resources and slow-walking to avoid throwing out applicants who don’t meet the standards for asylum is in the pace at which applications are being processed.
Besides the separation of families something that upsets me in this whole matter is the slander of the poor civil servants administering the whole shebang. It doesn’t ring true with me. I think that there are very few Simon Legrees working for the federal government but that’s not the impression you’d have from reading the pundits, editors, bloggers, and blog commenters.
The Atlantic Monthly had an article (last month?) about German handling of refugee claims, in which the investigators gave credence to their belief that they needed to examine these claims thoroughly to remove frauds because their is a de facto limitation on the number of refugees that a country will allow and permitting the fraud to enter ultimately will harm legitimate claims.
Still, the examples of how they uncover frauds did not meet the standards of fact-finding. It was all about taking statements in order to find something falsifiable. That’s not fact-finding, it’s witness- vetting. It reminded me of what Chief Justice Vinson said about Justice Jackson at the Nuremberg trials: “I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law.” Still, the Germans, as in many past instances, appear more thorough than Americans, who cling to process and let the chips fall where they may.
I meant to add earlier, increasing the number of class from 25,000 to 130,000 is significant enough to change things, but generally, I think somewhere around 40% no-shows at 25,000 would appear to be reasonable to extend to 130,000 until shown otherwise.
PD- Looking at your article, unless I am reading it wrong, it appears to deal with families in general, not just those seeking asylum. Or, is it assumed that families are nearly always asylum seekers?
“I would assume the lengthier and more complicated the process, the more likely there is an appearance problem.”
Agreed. It sounds like some of that is due to the courts and poor communication. It is interesting that in PDs article they cite a 99% appearance rate when people are put into a program that works with asylum seekers to make sure they show. That one was in 2011-2013. The more recent program had the same success rate.
Steve
It is interesting that in PDs article they cite a 99% appearance rate when people are put into a program that works with asylum seekers to make sure they show. That one was in 2011-2013. The more recent program had the same success rate.
That seems likely to be selection bias. While I favor the use of such programs so that the most deserving applicants get through, it says nothing about how to handle the rest. I suppose it tells us that we might be pretty good at vetting the top tier to get the right group of people into the programs.