Docket Still Mostly Civil
New data show that only 2% of immigrant‑court filings in February were based on alleged criminal activity, meaning most cases arise from status or procedural issues. EOIR has announced 15 new immigration judges and 17 temporary judges to ease throughput pressure, even as reporting says the Justice Department dropped roughly 23,000 criminal probes to refocus resources on immigration enforcement. (tpr.org) (aila.org) (techdirt.com)
The surprise in the new immigration-court data is how little of the docket starts with an alleged crime at all. In February 2026, the Department of Homeland Security filed 741 notices to appear based on alleged criminal activity, and that was just 2% of all new filings that month. (tpr.org) A notice to appear is the charging paper that starts an immigration-court case, and most of those papers in February were about immigration status or procedure instead of a criminal allegation. Texas Public Radio reported that the majority involved claims that people had violated immigration rules, not that they had committed separate crimes. (tpr.org) That fits the basic structure of immigration court in the United States, because these are civil courts run by the Executive Office for Immigration Review inside the Justice Department, not criminal courts that hand down jail sentences. The court’s job is usually to decide whether someone can stay, must leave, or qualifies for relief like asylum. (justice.gov) The scale is enormous even before you get to the criminal-versus-civil split. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University said 3,318,099 active cases were pending in immigration court at the end of February 2026, including 2,322,671 people already waiting on asylum hearings or decisions. (tracreports.org) The backlog is so large that even a month with more closures than new filings barely dents it. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse said the court had closed 333,957 cases in fiscal year 2026 through February while receiving 201,878 new cases over the same period, yet the pending pile still stood above 3.3 million. (tracreports.org) That is why the Executive Office for Immigration Review announced another hiring wave this week. It said 15 immigration judges and 17 temporary immigration judges were invested to serve courts in 18 states, including Texas, California, Florida, New York, and Virginia. (justice.gov) Those hires add people to the bench, but they do not change what most cases are about. If only 2% of February filings were tied to alleged criminal activity, then adding judges mostly means pushing a bigger volume of status, asylum, and procedural cases through a clogged civil system faster. (tpr.org) (justice.gov) At the same time, the wider Justice Department has been moving resources toward immigration enforcement outside the courtroom too. ProPublica reported that the department closed more than 23,000 criminal investigations in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration while launching about 32,000 new immigration-related cases. (yahoo.com) So the picture is not “immigration court is filling up with criminals.” The picture is a civil court system with more than 3.3 million pending cases, a new batch of judges sent in to move that line faster, and a federal enforcement apparatus shifting manpower toward immigration even though the court filings themselves are still overwhelmingly noncriminal. (tracreports.org) (justice.gov) (tpr.org)
