In my office, we’ve recently been receiving motions from DHS (the prosecutor in Immigration Court) asking to reopen administratively closed cases and place them on the court’s active docket. Some of these cases were closed more than 15 years ago, and they belong to lawyers who have long ago left my office. How we will even find some of these clients to let them know, I am not sure.
As it turns out, we are not alone. Although there has been no official announcement from DHS, it seems that the agency wants to re-calendar all closed cases, which represents almost 400,000 non-citizens. Added to the current Immigration Court backlog, which stands at about 3.5 million, this new push to re-calendar cases will further overwhelm an already overloaded system.
Here, we will discuss what is happening, what to do if you currently have an administratively closed case, and how this new development might affect the Immigration Courts more generally.