EOIR FY 2015 Statistical Yearbook Now Available (For Immigration Court Cases Only, Not Summary Removals)

The Fiscal Year 2015 Statistics Yearbook for the Executive Office of Immigration Review is now available! The annual publication provides a number of helpful statistics on removal cases before the immigration courts.   The 2015 yearbook shows, among other things, that the total number of matters received by EOIR dropped, in comparison to both FY 2014 (11 percent decrease) and FY 2011 (16 percent decrease). 

It is worth keeping in mind, however, that removal cases that go before the nation’s immigration courts represent only a fraction of actual removals processed by DHS, because the vast majority of removals now occur via summary removal procedures such as expedited removal, administrative removal, and reinstatement of removal.  Expedited removal, administrative removal and reinstatement are not included in EOIR’s Statistical Yearbook.  Check out Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia’s law review article, The Rise of Speed Deportation and the Role of Discretion” in the Columbia Journal of Race and Law, or the ACLU Report, “American Exile: Rapid Deportations that Bypass the Courtroom,” for more on this topic.  Also, I  have related article (entitled, “Removal in the Shadows of Immigration Court,”) that I hope to post on SSRN soon. 

-JKoh