Immigration court backlog subsides in second Trump administration

The Trump administration’s tough-on-immigration policies are on pace to reduce the backlog of cases in the nation’s immigration courts, reversing a long-running trend that has raised concerns from lawmakers of both parties.

The number of pending cases in the asylum and deportation system reached an all-time high of 3.7 million cases at the end of fiscal 2024, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, which compiles data on immigration enforcement.

But the number had dropped to 3.4 million, a decrease of about 8 percent, with one month remaining in fiscal 2025, the data shows, the first decline in the backlog since at least 2012. As of March, the average wait time for those in the backlog was 636 days, TRAC reported.

The decrease comes as President Trump Donald Trump has instituted restrictive policies on immigration that cut off entryways for migrants, effectively ending asylum applications and bringing the total number of apprehensions of illegal crossers to all-time lows, immigration experts said.

Andrew R. Arthur, a former immigration judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for limiting immigration, identified “shutting off that valve at the border” as a main reason for the reduction in the backlog, pointing out 140,000 more immigration cases were completed than were filed in the first nine months of 2025.

But Arthur also attributed the decline to an influx of cases being decided against applicants in absentia because they didn’t show up in court. Nearly 219,000 cases in the first nine months of 2025 were decided without the applicant appearing in court, compared to 91,356 cases in 2019, Arthur said.

“I mean, if you don’t show up, it’s really easy to complete your case,” Arthur said.

Asylum applicants who have had their cases decided against them after they didn’t show in court, Arthur said, are subject to a fine and “if they come across you, or they go out and pick you up, you’re basically on your way out of the United States.”

Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which has an estimated 18,000 immigration attorneys affiliated with his network, also acknowledged attorneys have observed an increasing number of cases being decided in absentia.

Chen said that’s the result of applicants being afraid that if they come to court a judge will unfairly dismiss their case and leave them vulnerable to immediate deportation, pointing to reports that found officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement were asking judges to dismiss the cases so they could detain those people immediately.

“I am concerned that people are afraid now to appear in court, even if they believe they have a valid case, because they do not think the courts are going to give them the fair due process that Americans expect out of our courts,” Chen said. “And the courts are making decisions to find them to be deportable, removal from the country, in absentia, without them being present.”

The number of pending immigration cases remains at a staggering high compared to fiscal years past. The number more than doubled during Trump’s first term, from 620,000 in fiscal 2017 to 1.3 million in fiscal 2020. Then the number nearly tripled during the Biden administration, to 3.7 million at the end of fiscal 2024, which was just ahead of the 2024 presidential election where immigration enforcement was a main topic.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Trump’s immigration policies had a major role in the reduction of immigration cases, including encouraging migrants to self-deport.

“My common sense tells me it’s because we’ve had people willingly leave the country that were here illegally,” the Iowa Republican said.

Congress over the past decade has provided funding for additional immigration judges and support staff to boost the overall capacity of the asylum and deportation system. The number of immigration judges increased to around 700 in recent years.

Both Republicans and Democrats during that time proposed an increase in judges when they controlled the appropriations process, and as part of bipartisan proposals on border security.

The latest increase was in this year’s reconciliation package, which included $3.3 billion for the Justice Department, a portion of which would go to the Executive Office for Immigration Review to hire immigration judges and staff. The law also caps the number of immigration judges at 800.

Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, a Republican and member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the decrease in the backlog of immigration cases was “significant,” but that doesn’t change the need to add more immigration judges to the roster.

“We still have a massive backlog, so we still need quite a few immigration judges be able to get caught up completely on the backlog,” Lankford said. “That is very long.”

Lankford was among the senators who assembled and pressed for passage of a bipartisan border bill last Congress that included $440 million for more immigration judges.

Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat and also a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the decline in immigration cases may be because “people feel under attack in many different ways,” but also said the remainder of cases demonstrates the need for more immigration judges.

“The huge backlog that we’ve had when it comes to immigration cases, just shows maybe it would take well over a decade to even just get through some of the backlog that we’ve already had,” Kim said. “There have been proposals to try to dramatically increase the funding when it comes to immigration judges. I would support an effort like that.”

Arthur said the decline in the immigration backlog does “absolutely not” indicate a change in the need for adding more immigration judges to the bench, saying he’s “confident” the cap on immigration judges at 800 will be taken out in the next congressional omnibus package.

“Because you still got a huge number of cases, and some of those cases are taking years to complete,” Arthur said. “So we need more immigration judges.”

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