Turns out, when the law is enforced, some people suddenly lose interest in showing up to court.
Immigration courts across the United States are seeing a sharp rise in no-shows, with judges issuing a growing number of deportation orders for migrants who simply don’t appear for their hearings. According to Department of Justice data, more than 310,000 deportation orders were issued in absentia during fiscal year 2025 alone. That’s up from roughly 223,000 the year before, 160,000 in fiscal year 2023, 62,000 in 2022, and just 8,000 in 2021. Funny how the numbers change when enforcement actually exists.
The dramatic drop in court appearances can largely be traced back to President Donald Trump’s reversal of a key Biden-era policy that had instructed immigration judges to dismiss or terminate thousands of cases. That policy effectively allowed more than 700,000 illegal immigrants to remain in the country without legal status — a move that predictably sent the message that court dates were optional.
Andrew Arthur, resident law and policy fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, explained that many illegal immigrants see little incentive to appear when they know they can’t present a legitimate reason to stay. In hundreds of thousands of cases last year, they simply chose not to show up. And who can blame them — consequences are inconvenient.
Arthur also pointed out that the surge ties back to the millions of illegal border crossers released into the country under the Biden administration who never applied for immigration status in the first place. When people are waved in and told paperwork doesn’t really matter, skipping court starts to feel like a logical next step.
Another factor driving absences is the Trump administration’s renewed directive for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make arrests at immigration courts. Under Trump’s second term, ICE has increasingly taken individuals into custody when they appear for removal proceedings — a development that has clearly discouraged some from attending.
As Arthur noted, those individuals are still entitled to due process, and the government will ensure they receive it. The only difference now is that many will receive that process while detained, which, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, is exactly how it was supposed to work from the start. Complaining about enforcement after ignoring the law isn’t much of a legal argument.
The spike in no-shows may be framed by critics as a problem, but it also highlights something important: President Trump’s immigration policies are restoring credibility to the system. When the rules are enforced, loopholes close, incentives change, and the message becomes clear.
And for the first time in years, immigration court is no longer just paperwork theater — it’s becoming a place where the law actually means something again.
