(NewsNation) — Court-ordered deportations have increased 50% over 2019’s peak removals in the first half of the 2024 fiscal year with Biden’s expansion of immigration judges, a new report finds.
In the first half of this fiscal year, 136,623 immigrants already living in the U.S. were deported or ordered deportation, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
It was also discovered only 20% of immigrants filing for an asylum application were ordered to be removed.
Deportations by location
The largest removal has been in New York City, where just under 11,000 immigrants sheltering in the city were deported. It comes as the Big Apple has struggled to handle an influx of migrants who have arrived in the city since the spring of 2022, with more than 187,000 people seeking asylum.
Many of those migrants had been bussed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in attempts to provoke policy change at the southern border. Abbott bused more than 100,000 migrants to northern sanctuary cities.
The next largest court-ordered removals were 8,000 immigrants in Harris County, Texas, and nearly 6,000 immigrants in Los Angeles County, California.
Chicago ranked 10th on the list with just over 1,500 immigrants departed despite it being another Democratic hub that ranked high in receiving new asylum seekers, the report said.