Deportations

President Obama used an executive order to expand Expedited Removal and stopped illegal migrants at the border and turned them around. He also used this to deport illegal migrants in the country. In both cases this was done without the courts determining asylum status. The Trump administration continued the process but slowed the border crossings. Under President Biden border crossings rose to record levels and when Trump took over in his second term the crossings were brought down to almost zero. Shift from Judicial to Non-Judicial: The US deportation system has seen a shift over time, moving away from a predominantly judicial process (prior to 1996) to one with more non-judicial removals. U.S. immigration courts are facing a significant backlog, with TRAC reporting over 3.6 million open cases. This backlog leads to substantial delays in processing cases, with average wait times exceeding nearly 670 days. As of July 2024, there were 425,431 non-citizens with criminal convictions on ICE's "non-detained docket" - a database of people facing deportation proceedings but who are not held in ICE custody. Without using non-judicial methods these deportations will take many years.