Breaking the Cycle of Dysfunction at the U.S. Immigration Courts
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Highlights
With 3.8 million deportation cases pending as of mid-2025, the U.S. immigration courts faced a deepening crisis requiring urgent legislative and administrative reform.
- The immigration court backlog more than doubled from fiscal year 2021 to 2024, reaching 3.8 million cases amid record border arrivals, mass asylum filings, and chronic underfunding relative to immigration enforcement agencies.
- Different strategies under the Biden and Trump administrations prolonged the dysfunction: The Biden-era prosecutorial discretion reshuffled cases without resolving them, while President Donald Trump’s firings of more than 139 judges and arrests at courthouses further slowed proceedings.
- Nearly 68 percent of people in removal proceedings lacked legal representation; cuts to legal orientation programs undermined court efficiency and due process.
- The study recommends increasing funding for adjudication, implementing the asylum officer rule, triaging high-risk cases, modernizing court technology, and expanding access to legal counsel.
The immigration courts have long faced high caseloads, but the backlog has seen considerable growth in recent years. With nearly 3.8 million pending deportation cases as of mid-2025, delays in the courts hamper core functions of the broader U.S. immigration system—including leaving individuals who are in need of protection waiting years for a decision in their asylum case, while those who are ineligible are not ordered removed in a timely manner.
To understand how the courts reached this point, this policy brief provides an overview of policies under the Biden administration and early actions during the second Trump term. Many of the most pressing issues have been the focus, in different ways and to different extents, of executive branch actions and proposed legislation, but these efforts have failed to produce a well-functioning immigration court system.
The brief concludes by highlighting concrete administrative and legislative actions that could transform the immigration courts, making proceedings fairer and more efficient and enabling judges to focus on high-priority cases—those affecting national security and public safety.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Record Border Arrivals Overwhelm the Courts under Biden
A. More Asylum Applications Than Ever Before
B. Backlog Mitigation: Asylum Restrictions and Prosecutorial Discretion
3 Trump 2.0: Avoiding the Courts and Speeding up Deportations
A. The Alien Enemies Act, Expedited Removal, and Arrests at the Courts
B. Firing Immigration Judges and Halting Legal Advice Services
C. Record Number of Asylum Cases Poses Ongoing Challenges
4 Recent Attempts at Legislative Reform
5 Recommendations for Transformation
A. Reprogram Resources to Better Meet System Needs
B. Direct Asylum Officers to Adjudicate All Incoming Asylum Cases
C. Prioritize Cases that Pose National Security or Public Safety Threats
D. Modernize Courts’ Operations and Use of Technology
E. Provide Access to Legal Advice and Representation
6 Conclusion
About the U.S. Immigration Policy Program
The U.S. Immigration Policy Program provides analysis of U.S. immigration pathways, the impacts of enforcement and other policies, and the characteristics of immigrant populations.
Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Initiative
This Initiative is generating a big-picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in America’s future by providing policy ideas that reflect new realities.
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