One-Third of New Immigration Court Cases Are Children; One in Eight Are 0-4 Years of Age

New report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University finds that “almost one-third of all new cases in Immigration Court are juveniles. Case-by-case Immigration Court records updated through February 2022 indicate that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued 310,359 Notices to Appear (NTA) so far during fiscal year 2022 (October 2021-February 2022). Where age is recorded, 81,080 or 31 percent of these immigrants were from 0 to 17 years of age at the time DHS issued the NTA. These counts underestimate the actual number of children since for an additional 15 percent the age was unknown.”

TRAC also updated their report with a new design that the organization describes as follows: “This report showcases the first significant change in the design of TRAC’s reports in many years and reflects TRAC’s commitment to making improvements that will benefit our users.”

For those wishing to cite TRAC’s reports, the reports also come with a suggested citation in a footnote: “The suggested citation for this report is as follows: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (March 17, 2022). One-Third of New Immigration Court Cases Are Children; One in Eight Are 0-4 Years of Age. Syracuse University. https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/681/.”

See TRAC’s report here: https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/681/.

Austin Kocher