Research
Immigration court backlog: pending cases, new cases and representation
On June 30, 2026, EOIR reported 3,469,569 cases pending in the immigration courts, 253,207 fewer than at the end of fiscal year 2025 and 11.6% below the fiscal year 2024 peak. In fiscal year 2025, 55% of completed cases had a representative on record.
Key facts
- Cases pending
- 3,469,569
- June 30, 2026, preliminary
- New cases a month
- 43,461
- October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026
- Cases completed a month
- 73,371
- October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026
- Completed cases with a representative
- 55%
- fiscal year 2025
- Asylum grants, share of grants and denials
- 7.5%
- October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026
- Asylum applications pending
- 2,324,099
- June 30, 2026
Download the data (CSV) Free under CC BY 4.0. No email or login.
What do these numbers count?
- Pending cases. Removal, deportation, exclusion, asylum-only and withholding-only cases that an immigration judge has not yet decided, counted at the end of a fiscal year (October 1 to September 30) or of a quarter.
- New cases and completions. New cases are initial receipts. Completions are initial plus subsequent case completions, so a case can be completed more than once.
- Representation. A representative of record is noted in EOIR’s case system, usually with a filed Form EOIR-28. It counts people with a lawyer or an accredited representative, not the quality of the help.
- The case-data file. EOIR also releases its case tables each month. We count proceedings with no judge’s decision date by court, by the respondent’s state of address and by nationality, and publish only counts.
What did we find?
- The backlog grew nearly fivefold, then began to fall. Pending cases rose from 826,505 at the end of fiscal year 2016 to 3,924,993 at the end of fiscal year 2024. They stood at 3,469,569 on June 30, 2026 (preliminary).
- Fewer new cases are arriving than are being completed. From October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, EOIR received 391,145 new cases (43,461 a month) and completed 660,343 (73,371 a month), 29,910 more a month than it received. New cases ran at 148,659 a month in fiscal year 2024.
- Representation is recorded for 55% of completed cases. In fiscal year 2025, 143,614 of 263,133 completed cases (leaving out in absentia orders, terminations and dismissals) had a representative on record. The rate was 77% for completed asylum cases, 89% for cases of unaccompanied children and 76% for appeals.
- Asylum grants were 7.5% of grants plus denials from October 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. Judges issued 254,680 asylum decisions in all, of which 7,231 were grants and 89,740 denials. The same share was 24.4% in fiscal year 2025, and ran from 24.4% (fiscal year 2025) to 48.1% (fiscal year 2023) across fiscal years 2016 to 2025.
- 2,324,099 asylum applications were pending on June 30, 2026, and 16,560 cases of unaccompanied children, 9,906 of them for more than five years.
- Five immigration courts hold 37.7% of the pending proceedings in the October 1, 2026 case-data file: Miami (FL) 279,387, New York (NY) 229,235, Orlando (FL) 226,878, Newark (NJ) 218,385 and Chicago (IL) 192,828.
- Most pending proceedings are recent. 82.0% were received in 2023 or later, and 157,864 were received in 2019 or earlier.
- A representative of record is on file for 50.6% of pending proceedings, and it varies by court. Among the courts with at least 20,000 pending, it runs from 26.4% at Dallas (TX) to 93.1% at Los Angeles (CA).
How has the backlog moved since 2016?
Pending immigration court cases at each fiscal year end rose from 826,505 in 2016 to a peak of 3,924,993 in 2024, then fell to 3,469,569 on June 30, 2026.
- New cases
- Completed cases
New cases per fiscal year peaked at 1,783,905 in 2024; completions peaked at 798,808 in 2025. The 2026 figures cover only the months to June 30, 2026.
The numbers behind the charts, by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Pending at the end | New cases | Completed | Asylum grants, share of grants and denials |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2016 | 826,505 | 228,450 | 143,479 | 42.5% |
| FY 2017 | 975,995 | 295,259 | 163,071 | 37.5% |
| FY 2018 | 1,108,319 | 316,131 | 195,144 | 33.1% |
| FY 2019 | 1,391,386 | 547,236 | 277,073 | 29.4% |
| FY 2020 | 1,551,996 | 369,578 | 232,311 | 26% |
| FY 2021 | 1,694,255 | 244,264 | 115,965 | 34.4% |
| FY 2022 | 2,105,316 | 707,529 | 314,831 | 45.9% |
| FY 2023 | 2,811,599 | 1,206,102 | 526,812 | 48.1% |
| FY 2024 | 3,924,993 | 1,783,905 | 705,249 | 45.7% |
| FY 2025 | 3,722,776 | 562,375 | 798,808 | 24.4% |
| FY 2026 (to Q3) | 3,469,569 | 391,145 | 660,343 | 7.5% |
How many completed cases had a representative in fiscal year 2025?
EOIR publishes one representation table a year. A person whose representative has not yet filed Form EOIR-28 counts as unrepresented.
| Group of completed cases | Without a representative | With a representative | Total | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Completed case appeals | 5,782 | 18,292 | 24,074 | 76% |
| Completed asylum cases (excluding in absentia) | 56,316 | 186,821 | 243,137 | 77% |
| All completed cases (excluding in absentia orders, terminations and dismissals) | 119,519 | 143,614 | 263,133 | 55% |
| Completed cases of unaccompanied children (excluding in absentia) | 1,240 | 10,441 | 11,681 | 89% |
Where are the pending cases?
These counts come from EOIR’s case-data file of October 1, 2026: 3,037,977 proceedings with no judge’s decision date, a representative of record on file for 50.6%. They are not EOIR’s published total, and the courts, states and nationalities below are three ways of cutting the same file.
By immigration court
| Immigration court | Pending proceedings | Share of all pending | With a representative of record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miami (FL) | 279,387 | 9.2% | 42.1% |
| New York (NY) | 229,235 | 7.5% | 79.4% |
| Orlando (FL) | 226,878 | 7.5% | 30.1% |
| Newark (NJ) | 218,385 | 7.2% | 37.5% |
| Chicago (IL) | 192,828 | 6.3% | 40.0% |
| Concord (CA) | 170,603 | 5.6% | 62.5% |
| Dallas (TX) | 126,669 | 4.2% | 26.4% |
| Memphis (TN) | 120,299 | 4.0% | 41.0% |
| Atlanta (GA) | 116,247 | 3.8% | 36.7% |
| Charlotte (NC) | 115,541 | 3.8% | 32.7% |
| Boston (MA) | 84,131 | 2.8% | 59.9% |
| Philadelphia (PA) | 80,398 | 2.6% | 64.4% |
| San Antonio (TX) | 73,384 | 2.4% | 32.9% |
| Denver (CO) | 70,916 | 2.3% | 27.3% |
| Chelmsford (MA) | 63,389 | 2.1% | 63.6% |
By state of the respondent’s address
| State of address | Pending proceedings | Share of all pending | With a representative of record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florida | 491,993 | 16.2% | 37.4% |
| California | 331,388 | 10.9% | 75.0% |
| New York | 298,326 | 9.8% | 77.5% |
| Texas | 254,420 | 8.4% | 40.4% |
| New Jersey | 206,794 | 6.8% | 38.7% |
| Illinois | 150,937 | 5.0% | 39.8% |
| Massachusetts | 124,932 | 4.1% | 59.6% |
| Georgia | 98,544 | 3.2% | 37.8% |
| North Carolina | 73,994 | 2.4% | 33.2% |
| Pennsylvania | 73,372 | 2.4% | 63.5% |
| Colorado | 71,102 | 2.3% | 26.8% |
| Indiana | 65,897 | 2.2% | 35.8% |
| Tennessee | 60,492 | 2.0% | 42.3% |
| Ohio | 50,509 | 1.7% | 71.4% |
| Washington | 47,321 | 1.6% | 53.7% |
By nationality
| Nationality | Pending proceedings | Share of all pending | With a representative of record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venezuela | 480,005 | 15.8% | 29.3% |
| Mexico | 400,724 | 13.2% | 50.9% |
| Guatemala | 220,808 | 7.3% | 56.9% |
| Colombia | 217,767 | 7.2% | 33.0% |
| Honduras | 206,345 | 6.8% | 51.1% |
| Haiti | 189,901 | 6.3% | 26.9% |
| Cuba | 169,434 | 5.6% | 42.1% |
| Ecuador | 147,618 | 4.9% | 46.3% |
| Nicaragua | 110,194 | 3.6% | 44.2% |
| India | 99,918 | 3.3% | 92.5% |
By year the proceeding was received
| Year received | Pending proceedings | Share of all pending |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 or earlier | 157,864 | 5.2% |
| 2020 | 55,227 | 1.8% |
| 2021 | 79,258 | 2.6% |
| 2022 | 241,334 | 7.9% |
| 2023 | 681,187 | 22.4% |
| 2024 | 884,102 | 29.1% |
| 2025 | 473,549 | 15.6% |
| 2026 | 452,657 | 14.9% |
Every court, state and nationality is in the CSV. Counts under 11 are suppressed. The state table leaves out addresses outside the United States and its territories, so it adds to slightly less than 3,037,977.
Why this is not the published total: applying the same rule to June 30, 2026 gives 3,179,553 pending proceedings, against 3,469,569 in EOIR’s published statistics for that date. We show both and never add or splice them.
How did we build it?
We download each table of EOIR’s Workload and Adjudication Statistics from justice.gov and read it by machine. Before a value is kept, every table is checked against its own totals (asylum outcomes, applications and representation add up, and the same figures agree across files). The court, state and nationality counts are made from EOIR’s monthly FOIA case-data file, which we read straight from the archive, keeping only counts.
- Statistics change. EOIR says its statistics are subject to change. The latest quarter is marked preliminary, and we update it when EOIR does.
- Two cuts, never mixed. The published totals are as of a fiscal-quarter end. The court, state and nationality counts come from the monthly file and are never added to the published totals.
- The state is the address on file. It can be out of date and is not the state of the court.
- The grant share is ours. We divide grants by grants plus denials. EOIR does not publish this rate, and other outcomes are left out of the denominator.
- Counts, not outcomes. A pending case is not a prediction, and nothing here is a recommendation about any person’s case. Not legal advice.
- Privacy. No case, name, address or ID is published, and every count under 11 is suppressed.
The full records, with the source on every row, are in the data files.
How to cite this study
You can reuse, adapt and republish this data, including commercially, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). The only condition is that you credit Probative and link to the source.
- Version
- 1.0.0, released October 28, 2026
- Every version
- 10.5281/zenodo.23739985 (always points to the newest)
- License
- CC BY 4.0
Download the data
- CSV: data.csv 28 KB · every national series, state, court and nationality record
- CSV: immigration-courts.csv 113 KB · every record with its source
- JSON: immigration-courts.json 266 KB · every record with its history and source
Free, no email or login. The files are hosted on this site and Zenodo, a public research archive.
Suggested citation
Probative. (2026). Immigration court backlog, representation and asylum outcomes (EOIR workload statistics and case data) (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23739986
Credit line for a chart, table or article
Source: Probative, Immigration court backlog, representation and asylum outcomes (EOIR workload statistics and case data), version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23739986, licensed CC BY 4.0.
Not legal advice. These are counts from the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s published statistics and case data, kept for marketing planning. EOIR says its statistics are subject to change.
Where can I read more?
- The dataset: immigration court data, with the API and MCP tools.
- The official pages: EOIR workload and adjudication statistics, EOIR FOIA library.
- Report an error: the data corrections log.
Questions about the immigration court backlog
How many cases are pending in U.S. immigration court?
3,469,569 on June 30, 2026, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). That was 253,207 fewer than at the end of fiscal year 2025 and 11.6% below the end of fiscal year 2024, when it was 3,924,993. EOIR says its statistics are subject to change.
What share of immigration court cases have a lawyer?
EOIR’s published rate for fiscal year 2025 is 55% of completed cases (143,614 of 263,133), 77% for completed asylum cases and 89% for cases of unaccompanied children. It counts a representative who has filed Form EOIR-28; a person whose representative has not yet filed it counts as unrepresented. The rate describes completed cases, not the pending ones.
Why does the case-data file show a different pending number?
The two come from different cuts. EOIR’s published 3,469,569 is as of June 30, 2026. The monthly case-data file, dated October 1, 2026, lists 3,037,977 proceedings with no judge’s decision date, and applying the same rule to June 30, 2026 gives 3,179,553, which is 290,016 fewer than the published figure. We show both and never add or splice them.
Which immigration court has the most pending cases?
In the October 1, 2026 case-data file, Miami (FL) has the most, with 279,387 pending proceedings (9.2% of the file), followed by New York (NY) (229,235), Orlando (FL) (226,878) and Newark (NJ) (218,385).
Does the state in the table mean where the court is?
No. The state table uses the state of the respondent’s address in EOIR’s file, which can be out of date and can differ from the state of the court. The court table groups proceedings by the court that holds the docket, including cases heard by video from elsewhere.
Where does this data come from, and how often is it updated?
The national tables come from EOIR’s Workload and Adjudication Statistics, and the court, state and nationality counts from EOIR’s monthly FOIA case-data file. We read each file from justice.gov, check every table against its own totals, and read them again every month. No case, name or address is published, and counts under 11 are suppressed.
Can I reuse this immigration-court data?
Yes. EOIR’s figures are U.S. Government work and our compilation is free under CC BY 4.0. Credit Probative with a link to this page. The data is free to download.
The data behind this study, with its API and MCP server: Immigration court data: EOIR dataset, CSV and API.
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