| Detention Drops As New Immigration Court Cases Surge | ||
| (26 Jun 2026)
An unheralded drop in detention has occurred among noncitizens 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, 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. 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). Despite this, not only the odds of detention but the actual number of individuals the Court recorded as detained for these same periods has fallen. Patterns differ by Immigration Court. For example, at the Newark Immigration Court case filings fell by half, while Houston and San Antonio saw the largest spikes – with four times or more new case filings. These findings are based on a detailed analysis of the latest case-by-case court records obtained and analyzed by TRAC Reports. TRAC has added these latest Immigration Court details 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. Additional findings are available in TRAC’s full report.
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