Immigration courts in Pa., NJ and DE issued record number of deportation orders in June

Immigration courts in Pa., NJ and DE issued record number of deportation orders in June

46,000 orders of removal or voluntary deportation have been issued since Trump returned to office, exceeding the number over the entirety of Biden’s term.

Immigration courts in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware are ordering people removed from the country in numbers not seen in at least a quarter century.

At the Philadelphia immigration court — which hears cases for most Pennsylvania and Delaware residents — orders of removal or voluntary departure rose 71%, from 1,230 in May to 2,105 in June. At New Jersey’s courts, orders rose 47%, from 2,348 to 3,446.

The figures are the highest since at least late 1997.

“We’re definitely seeing an increase in removal orders where we may not have seen them in the past,” said Emma Tuohy, a partner at Philadelphia’s Simon, Choi & Tuohy and a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Philadelphia chapter. “Cases are getting more difficult to win.”

June’s cases bring to more than 46,000 the number of removal and voluntary deportation orders courts across the three states have issued since President Donald Trump’s return to office — slightly more than the total issued over the entirety of former President Joe Biden’s term.

(A voluntary departure order requires an individual to leave the country but, unlike a removal order, does not legally bar them from returning.)

Local immigration attorneys say the surge in such orders reflects the Trump administration’s success in transforming immigration courts from independent arbiters of the law into components of a larger deportation machine. Immigration judges, they say, now often work in concert with government agents and attorneys to remove the maximum number of people from the country as quickly as possible, sometimes violating the due process rights of people who find themselves caught up in the system.

Lilah Thompson, chief of immigration in the Community Defense Unit at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, has seen the trend in her own practice.

“The immigration judges are on the same side as ICE and DHS, which is not supposed to be the case. They’re supposed to be neutral arbiters of the law,” Thompson said. “But that is not how it actually plays out.”

Unlike typical federal judges, immigration court judges are not independent judicial branch officials but executive branch employees within the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency responsible for overseeing the nation’s immigration courts system.

EOIR officials declined an interview request for this story. In a statement, a Department of Justice spokesperson said: “The Justice Department is restoring integrity to our immigration system by hearing cases fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly, in accordance with the law.”

The states’ record high figures and sharp month-over-month increases match the trend nationwide, as the country saw such orders rise by a third, to nearly 87,000. Nationally, more than 960,000 of these orders have been issued since Trump returned to office.

June’s increases reflect a gradual rise in such orders since then.

Compared with January 2025, removal and voluntary departure orders in Pennsylvania and Delaware were up nearly 300%, and more than 280% in New Jersey. Nationally, removal orders were up almost 160%.

The data were published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data gathering and research organization that regularly acquires and analyzes such data from EOIR.

Faster cases, more deportations

As the number of deportation orders has reached all-time highs, such orders have also come to represent the vast majority of deportation case outcomes.

In June, 90% of Pennsylvania and Delaware cases ended with an order of removal or voluntary departure. In New Jersey, 94% did. Nationally, about 89% of cases ended with such an order.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, more than 85% of cases have ended with such orders. Under Biden, about 44% did. About two-thirds of cases ended in a removal or voluntary departure order during Trump’s first term.

Rosina Stambaugh, a York-based immigration attorney, pointed to the faster pace of recent deportation cases as a major factor.

“They’re scheduling a final hearing in like two weeks. Before, we’d have at least a month to prepare,” Stambaugh said. “To prepare for a final hearing in just two weeks is insane. We used to have at least 30, sometimes 45 to 60 days to prepare for a hearing.”

The faster pace is in part the result of judges refusing to offer continuances, lawyers say. Before, it was ordinary for a judge to delay a hearing so an attorney had more time to prepare. That is no longer the case.

The change follows a series of rulings from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) — the highest administrative body for interpreting immigration laws. One such ruling largely prohibited judges from extending cases based on future eligibility for relief.

Stambaugh offered a client of hers as an example.

After the man was arrested in an ICE sweep, his fiancée, an American citizen, raced to file marriage paperwork. The couple were scheduled to get married the day after his hearing. Stambaugh asked the judge to delay issuing a ruling, as the impending marriage would have granted new grounds for protection from deportation. The judge refused and the man accepted a voluntary departure.

Tuohy pointed to another set of BIA decisions that has sped up cases — and made them harder to win.

Those rulings instruct judges to order someone removed before providing them with an opportunity for a full hearing of their case in some circumstances.

“So before anyone’s even had a chance to dive into the meat of the case — to really prepare evidence and prepare for the case — the judges are predetermining that the case is without merit and [removing] them,” Tuohy said.

More people detained while facing deportation, the vast majority with no criminal record

The increasing number of detained individuals is another factor fueling the surge in deportations, according to lawyers.

In June, more than 11% of people receiving orders of removal or voluntary departure in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware were in detention. That’s up from 7% in January 2025. Since Trump returned to office, about one in four people in the three states was detained, compared with about 7% during the Biden administration and 29% during Trump’s first term.

Stambaugh said that in the past, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents encountered someone without legal status who did not have a criminal record, they would usually just issue a notice to appear before a judge or even let them go after advising them to seek legal status. That has changed.

“It is a hundred percent that ICE officers no longer have discretion in who they can detain,” Stambaugh said. “Now, if you come in contact with ICE and you’re not a lawful permanent resident or U.S. citizen, you’re detained.”

As more people are detained during deportation proceedings, a smaller share of them have a criminal record.

In June, just 1% of cases in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware ending in an order of removal or voluntary departure were brought on grounds alleging a criminal violation, matching the share nationally. The last time more than 5% of cases ending in an order of removal or voluntary departure were brought under a criminal charge was December 2024, the month before Trump took office for his second term.

“They’re trying to remove as many people as possible, and they’re going to go for low-hanging fruit, which is individuals out in the community who are doing nothing wrong,” Thompson said, referencing collateral arrests and those that have occurred during individuals’ ICE check-ins.

A series of BIA rulings last year have also led to a growing detained population, lawyers say. In the most consequential of those, the board prohibited immigration judges from granting bond to peopl