Study on Aggravated Felony Removals

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has just released a report on the number and characteristics of persons charged in Immigration Court with the aggravated felony ground of deportation. The report can be found by clicking here. It is based on data that TRAC obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (the Immigration Court) through a FOIA request on each of the 156,000 persons in removal proceedings since 1997 who have been charged with this ground. One key finding of the report is that these persons had been in the US an average of 15 years prior to being put into proceedings; 25% had been here over 20 years. TRAC plans other reports as additional requested data is received from the Court. Larry Katzman is director of TRAC’s Immigration Project. For more information, Larry can be reached at lkatzman@syr.edu. The project was launched last year with the support of the JEHT Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and Syracuse University.

KJ