Immigration Courts Allow Aliens to Run Free, Former Miami Judge Charges

A former judge has outed the U.S. immigration court system as a judicial sieve that allows illegal aliens to run free.

Mark H. Metcalf, in a 100-page study titled "Built to Fail: Deception and Disorder in America's Immigration Courts," reports that:

• Very few aliens who file lawsuits to remain in the United States are deported, even though immigration courts -- after years of litigation -- order them removed.
• Deportation orders are rarely enforced, even against aliens who skip court or ignore orders to leave the United States.
• From 1996-2009, the United States allowed 1.9 million aliens to remain free before trial and 770,000 of them vanished. Nearly 1 million deportation orders were issued to this group -- 78 percent of these orders were handed down for court evasion.

Despite the Obama administration's announced deportation of 2,100 aliens who had been convicted of felonies, more than 500,000 remain in the country, and Metcalf said unexecuted removal orders are growing.

As of 2002, he said, 602,000 deportation orders had not been enforced. Since then, another 507,551 have been added to the rolls. Today, unexecuted removal orders number approximately 1,109,551 -- an 84 percent increase since 2002, said Metcalf who retired as an immigration court judge in Miami.

Read the report at www.cis.org.