Jordan, McClintock: Biden Agencies Fail to Initiate Deportation Proceedings for Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants

President Joe Biden’s agencies are failing to initiate deportation proceedings against hundreds of thousands of migrants released into the United States, forcing their cases to be dismissed, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Tom McClintock (R-CA) suggest.

The figures, detailed in a letter from Jordan and McClintock, indicate that the Biden administration is failing to file Notices to Appear (NTA) in federal immigration court for migrants released into the United States, but against whom the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is supposed to begin deportation proceedings.

Jordan and McClintock, who serve as chairs of the House Judiciary Committee and the Immigration Subcommittee respectively, write that some 200,000 migrants have had their deportation cases dismissed after DHS failed to file NTAs in their cases.

“According to a recent report, since the beginning of the Biden Administration, immigration judges have dismissed roughly 200,000 cases after DHS failed to file an alien’s NTA with an immigration court,” they write:

For aliens in the United States, including those encountered at the border, generally the filing of an NTA begins the process to potentially remove the alien from the country. Because an alien’s removal proceedings do not begin until DHS ‘files [the NTA] with the immigration court after it is served on [the alien],’ DHS’s failure to file NTAs has resulted in hundreds of thousands of case dismissals under the Biden administration for DHS’s ‘failure to prosecute. ‘In comparison, there were only 15,546 dismissals for failure to prosecute from fiscal year 2017 through fiscal year 2020. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration’s DHS has subsequently filed an NTA in only a quarter of cases that were dismissed. As the report notes, DHS’s inaction ‘block[s] off [immigration courts’] valuable limited time by scheduling hearings for cases that do not legally exist’ and leaves aliens in ‘legal limbo.’ [Emphasis added]

Jordan and McClintock are asking DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to provide them with the number of cases that the Executive Office for Immigration Review has dismissed after the agency failed to file NTAs and those cases where DHS eventually filed an NTA.

“The Committee is concerned with DHS’s inaction, which exacerbates the nation’s already backlogged immigration courts and creates additional chaos in the Biden Administration’s immigration crisis,” the congressmen write.

The revelation that the administration is failing to initiate deportation proceedings for hundreds of thousands of migrants comes as the nation’s immigration court backlog has topped three million cases on Biden’s watch. The overwhelming majority of migrants do not have valid asylum claims and become eligible for deportation.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow him on Twitter here.