Biden administration will potentially clear hundreds of thousands of deportation and asylum cases pending before immigration courts.
On Sunday,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent out a memo directing its lawyers to review cases and try to clear low-priority cases under enforcement guidelines the administration created last year. Currently, there is a backlog of 1.7 million cases.
By clearing low-priority cases,
The American Immigration Lawyers Association estimates this would include at least 700,000 low-priority cases, equaling about 40 percent of the backlog.
ICE has not released their estimate of how many cases would be cleared under this plan.