
ICE lawyers told to dismiss low-priority cases in order to clear
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.
