President Donald Trump is overseeing a massive uptick in requests to reopen previously closed deportation cases, according to data published this week by BuzzFeed News.

With less than two months to go in fiscal year 2018, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyers have asked federal immigration judges to reopen nearly 8,000 cases so far — almost twice the rate under President Barack Obama.

There were 8,400 requests to reopen closed cases in FY 2017, which included the last four months of the Obama administration. That was a marked increase from the 3,551 requests in FY 2016 and the 3,551 requests in FY 2015.

“Now that we have seen the numbers, I think it is extremely scary,” Sarah Pierce, of the Migration Policy Institute, told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “Many people have been here for years living in relative peace, and suddenly that is no longer true. Suddenly they are going to be back before an immigration judge and facing deportation.”


The move comes after a decision by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May sharply limited immigration judges’ ability to handle case loads by indefinitely suspending low-priority cases — part of a broader effort by the administration to slow both legal and illegal immigration and to ramp up deportations.

“There is no burden on the parties to provide a persuasive reason for recalendering, or to provide any reason at all,” said a June memo to ICE lawyers about Session’s decision that was published by the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “If a party moves for a case to be recalendered, the [immigration judge] ‘shall’ recalendar the case.”

Unlike regular criminal and civil courts, immigration courts are part of the Department of Justice, which is in the executive, not the judicial, branch. That gives Sessions the power to make decisions that are binding on immigration judges.

The Obama administration suspended more than 200,000 cases it saw as low-priority between 2011 and 2017, like those of unaccompanied children fleeing violence. With the new push to reopen cases, many of those people could now find themselves back before an immigration judge.

“[The] increase in motions to recalendar is part of a broad, administration-wide effort to increase deportations,” Sarah Pierce, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told BuzzFeed News.


“The effort has been accelerated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ ruling that immigration judges do not have the authority to administratively close cases, and subsequent DHS guidance to ICE attorneys instructing them to recalendar every single case that has ever been administratively closed.”

With 355,835 closed cases currently on the books, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the push to reopen and adjudicate them faces a logistical challenge. The June memo ranked the kinds of cases that the administration wanted ICE lawyers to focus on reopening: cases where the person is detained, cases where the person has a criminal history, cases where a previous ICE motion to reopen was denied, and cases closed over ICE’s objections.

But the memo was also clear about the administration’s larger goal.

“It is DHS’s intention to recalendar all cases that were previously administratively closed for reasons other than authorization by a regulation or judicially approved settlement agreement,” the memo said.