Detention Drops As New Immigration Court Cases Surge
Published Jun 26, 2026
An unheralded drop in detention has occurred among noncitizens whom the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now seeking to remove from the country in newly filed Notices to Appear (NTAs) in Immigration Court. During the last three months (March – May 2026) while the number of new NTAs filed by DHS in Immigration Court is sharply up, both the proportion of individuals detained as well as their absolute numbers have fallen.
The latest case-by-case Immigration Court records covering March through May 2026 show that only 17 percent of individuals issued new NTAs were detained. This compares with a 38 percent detention rate during the same three-month period of March-May 2025. See Figure 1.
This drop was unexpected. The small proportion of older cases detained in the Court’s 3.2 million overall case backlog have not fallen, and the latest immigration detention levels reported by ICE from all sources a year ago of 47,928 has climbed to 60,311 this year.
These findings regarding the detention of noncitizens in Immigration Court proceedings are based on a detailed analysis of the latest case-by-case court records obtained and analyzed by TRAC Reports.
New Court Filings versus Numbers Detained. An average of slightly over 50,000 new Notices to Appear (NTAs) have been filed in each of the last three months (March – May 2026). This is nearly twice the average of 26,000 NTAs filed a year earlier during the same period (March – May 2025). See Figure 2.
In comparison, the actual number of these individuals the Court recorded as detained during these same periods has fallen. The average number detained each month with new NTAs a year ago during March – May 2025 was 9,850 persons. In comparison, during the last three months the average number of individuals detained with new NTAs each month was 8,600 (March – May 2026).[1] Figure 3 shows this comparison for the January through May period. The heights of bars for the current year except for April are consistently lower than for the year before.
Changes in NTA Filings and Those Detained Vary by Court Location
Not all individual Immigration Courts, of course, experienced a growth in new cases compared with a year ago. For example, at the Newark Immigration Court case filings fell by half during this three-month period. But Newark was the exception among larger courts with at least 1,000 new monthly NTAs. The remaining large courts all posted increases. Courts in Texas such as in Houston and San Antonio saw the largest spikes – with four times or more new case filings. Substantial growth in new case arrivals was also experienced by the Orlando Immigration Court which at the end of May 2026 topped the list of courts with the largest number of filings that month, followed by the New York Immigration Court.
While detention rates varied greatly among courts, large courts that experienced the highest growth in new cases also generally showed declines in the odds of detention for noncitizens who were the subject of these newly filed NTAs.
TRAC has added the latest Immigration Court case-by-case data through May 2026 to the online tools on its website, tracreports.org. These track immigration enforcement over time and allow users to drill into new proceedings filed in Immigration Court by state and county, specific Court and hearing location, custody status, the nationality, language, and age of individuals, as well as many more factors.
To always be sure of having the latest metrics, our TRACmeters at the top of the immigration section track key figures. Clicking on an entry in a TRACmeter brings you to a Quick Facts page showing more detail.