The Justice Department has quietly taken steps to shut down what it calls an administrative “amnesty” that has allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. without ever having to face court-ordered deportations.
The Board of Immigration Appeals told immigration judges in a ruling Friday that they are no longer allowed to shunt cases onto their inactive dockets on the chance that migrants might have a path to some legal status years in the future.
Experts said the decision could apply to hundreds of thousands of cases.
At issue is “administrative closure,” when an immigration judge faces a deportation case but doesn’t issue a ruling either granting benefits or ordering deportation. Instead, the case is punted to the inactive docket.
Given that migrants with valid claims usually push for an affirmative ruling, most of those cases are people who probably deserve deportation, an administration official told The Washington Times.
Use of administrative closure has surged in recent years, leaving a massive pool of illegal immigrants whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can’t reach.
The administration official referred to them as the equivalent of border “got-aways,” or illegal immigrants who evaded capture by the Border Patrol and managed to disappear into the county’s interior.
“It not only adds to the illegal alien population but creates a pull factor to encourage other illegal aliens to come,” the official said.
The Board of Immigration Appeals’ ruling labeled administrative closure an “amnesty” and ordered judges to curtail its use.
“The board and immigration judges have no authority to use administrative closure as a de facto extra-statutory form of relief that effectively grants amnesty to thousands of removable aliens because they may be eligible for a visa sometime in the future,” Judge Sirce Owen wrote in the court’s opinion.
The specific case involved Sandra Ibarra-Vega. The Obama administration brought a deportation case against her in 2010, but three years later asked to drop the case through “administrative closure.” The judge agreed.
In 2018, Ms. Ibarra-Vega applied for a U visa, which is granted to victims or witnesses of certain crimes who are assisting law enforcement investigations.
Eight years later, that petition is still pending in a decades-long backlog.
Last year, the Homeland Security Department sought to renew the deportation case. The judge, pointing to Ms. Ibarra-Vega’s potential to obtain a U visa in the future, declined to reopen the case.
The ruling Monday overturned that decision and set a precedent that closing cases in this way is no longer allowed.
Congress has allowed just 10,000 U visas to be granted annually, but far more immigrants than that apply each year. Under the old policy, the application itself could serve as a defense against deportation.
Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge, said 416,000 U visa petitions were pending as of last summer.
“This opinion could tank nearly all of them,” said Mr. Arthur, now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
The Washington Times sought comment from several immigrant rights groups for this report.
Data published late last year showed that fewer than 180,000 cases were administratively closed in 2010. That grew to about 325,000 cases at the end of the Obama administration.
The tally dropped during the first Trump term and then surged again under President Biden, reaching nearly 390,000 at the end of fiscal year 2024. In 2025, the number fell below 340,000.
The Justice Department said the average case has been on its amnesty docket 6,389 days, or more than 17 years.
Despite lacking legal status, they are generally able to obtain work permits and compete with Americans for jobs, the administration official said.
Judge Owen, in a footnote in her opinion, questioned the entire idea of administrative closure. She suggested it may not be in line with the Constitution.
She said Congress has the power to write immigration law, and allowing the immigration courts, which are part of the Justice Department, to close cases and effectively block deportations seems to trample on congressional power.
She said the issue can be argued when the case returns to the lower immigration judge.
Although most of the attention in immigration has been on the Homeland Security Department and arrests, the immigration courts have been steadily issuing decisions and changing rules to streamline deportation cases and create more checks on bogus cases.
Last month, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a ruling allowing a U.S. citizen to challenge the immigration status of her former spouse, who she said had deceived her into a fraudulent marriage to gain a path to citizenship.
