McCain Wrong On Migrants Avoiding Court

Arizona Republic (Arizona)

By Julia Shumway

May 26, 2015

McCain wrong on migrants avoiding court 

WHO SAID IT: John McCain

TITLE: U.S. senator

PARTY: Republican

THE TARGET: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson

THE COMMENT: "Secretary Johnson, I don't see how you can sit there and act like you've achieved something when only 10 to 20 percent of the young people who come to this country actually show up to plead their case to be able to remain in this country."

THE FORUM: Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing on April 29.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING AT: How many unaccompanied minors who entered the U.S. illegally make their court dates.

ANALYSIS: The number of unaccompanied minors illegally entering the U.S. from Central American countries hit a record high of more than 68,500 in the summer of 2014.

When caught crossing the border, Mexican children can be turned back at the border, and Central American children are allowed in the country to stay in a shelter or with relatives, pending a hearing in Immigration Court. The Department of Homeland Security automatically files a request for removal, and a judge can choose whether to grant asylum or relief from deportation or send the child back to his or her home country.

As the cases from last summer work their way through the system, a handful of lawmakers have cited an 80 or 90 percent rate of absences at such court proceedings.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, first cited the 90 percent no-show figure in June 2014. When the Tampa Bay Times' Politifact questioned Goodlatte, the congressman said the source was an article by the conservative media organization Newsmax. In the Newsmax article, an unnamed detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was quoted saying a "massive number — 80 to 90 percent" of undocumented immigrants don't appear for deportation hearings.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake repeated the statistic on "PBS NewsHour" a few weeks later, citing Goodlatte as his source.

McCain's staff didn't respond to requests for comment on the source of his numbers.

But figures from federal agencies and independent studies don't support the numbers McCain and his colleagues have given.

Annual statistics released by the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review show that in absentia rulings made up 19 percent of all judges' decisions. Judges can issue in absentia removal rulings when undocumented immigrants fail to appear at a hearing.

Data on in absentia rates is publicly available for the past two decades. From 1996 to the early 2000s, in absentia rulings dropped slightly each year from 28 percent to around 20 percent, before nearly doubling to 39 percent in 2005 and 2006.

Most of the immigrants who failed to appear in court in those later years were apprehended at the Texas border and released because of a lack of detention space. That "catch and release" policy ended in August 2006, and rates of immigrants failing to appear in court dropped below 20 percent by 2007. Those rates rose slightly the last two years, but are still under 20 percent.

The EOIR's data looks at all immigrants and doesn't separate data on unaccompanied minors. A study at Syracuse University, which gathers and analyzes Immigration Court data, looked specifically at children and found that of the more than 60,000 immigration cases initiated against children in 2014, fewer than 9,000 had failed to appear in court. That could mean nearly 85 percent of minors required to appear before Immigration Court showed up at their court dates.

It's possible children counted in the 85 percent didn't appear in court, as there are cases in which children who fail to appear at their initial hearings aren't issued in absentia rulings.

The federal government began expediting cases involving unaccompanied minors last year, pushing to get children in front of a judge within 21 days of Immigrations and Custom Enforcement filing a case against them. This resulted in some immigrants receiving notice of just a few days to attend court hearings in a different state. In one instance reported in the Los Angeles Times, a California judge's afternoon docket consisted of 39 minors who had settled on the East Coast. None of the children appeared, but instead of issuing in absentia orders the judge opted to reschedule the hearings for court locations closer to where they were living.

BOTTOM LINE: Nearly 80 percent of all immigrants make their court dates, and nearly 85 percent of minors make theirs, according to the Department of Justice and Syracuse University reports. It's possible that some minors who miss these hearings aren't included, but the numbers would be nowhere near the figures cited by McCain.

THE FINDING: no stars: false

SOURCES: McCain's comments; "Surge continues but not as many Central American migrants reaching U.S.," Arizona Republic, April 22; "Immigration reform? Here's what Obama must do first, a top Republican says," Christian Science Monitor, June 26, 2014; "Sen. Jeff Flake says 90 percent of immigrants given court dates fail to show up," Politifact, July 10, 2014; "Flood of Illegal Immigrants Coming to a Neighborhood Near You," Newsmax, July 1, 2014; EOIR statistical yearbooks; "Criticism arises after children are rushed to see immigration judges," Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2014

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com