Texas immigration courts are carrying one of the nation’s largest backlogs as the system has undergone a sweeping shake-up of more than 200 judges, coinciding with a rise in deportation orders.
Nearly 3.2 million cases were pending before U.S. immigration courts as of June, including 321,006 in Texas, the third-highest total in the country, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Florida had the largest backlog, with 518,353 cases, followed by California, with 339,721.
The backlog persists even as immigration court records show a rise in case closures. In June, case closures reached an all-time high of 100,773, largely driven by a 30 percent jump in removals ordered by immigration judges.
Dallas has the largest backlog of any immigration court in Texas, with 153,267 pending cases. San Antonio followed with 88,365 cases, while Houston’s three immigration courts have 58,168 cases combined.
More than 200 immigration judges have left, been fired, retired, or resigned since early 2025, according to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and other federal reports. The number of immigration judges fell from 735 at the end of fiscal year 2024 to 587 earlier this year before climbing back to nearly 700 after the Trump Administration’s record hiring push.
“Immigration judges have been fired left and right, and I assume at least part of the reason they have been fired is that they have granted continuances at a rate that is just now becoming unacceptable,” Katherine Hawkins, an immigration attorney with Bailey & Galyen in Fort Worth, wrote in response to questions from The Texas Lawbook. “That means that new immigration judges are being hired, and many of them have less than zero immigration experience. So, they are making decisions inconsistent with the law and denying bond for no legal reason.”
As the Justice Department rebuilt the immigration bench with new and temporary judges, including the hiring of 153 judges this fiscal year, immigrants’ odds of prevailing appeared to decline. TRAC data showed that judges ordered deportation in 79.6 percent of completed cases in February, jumping to 87.1 percent in June. So far this fiscal year (through June 2026), immigration judges have issued removal and voluntary departure orders in 81.9 percent of completed cases, totaling 555,737 deportation orders.
“Winning is almost impossible simply because of the amount of discretion given to the immigration judge,” Hawkins said. “She or he may see that you meet all of the elements for relief but simply find that you don’t deserve relief because you’re not ‘credible’ or ‘trustworthy’ or ‘meritorious’ because of your arrest record, entry history, or even once because it was ‘irresponsible for the respondent to have four children if he couldn’t afford to do so.’”
Representation remains another major factor. Only 21.5 percent of immigrants, including unaccompanied children, had an attorney to assist them in Immigration Court cases when a removal order was issued in June 2026, according to TRAC.
“Even if you’re going to lose anyway,” Hawkins said, “at least there will be something on the record for you to appeal if someone who knows the law is helping you fight. I can’t imagine going to court alone when English isn’t your first language, and you haven’t studied the law at all.”
Of the 3,195,137 immigration cases pending nationwide, 2,310,698, or more than 72 percent, involve immigrants who have filed formal asylum applications, according to TRAC.
TRAC records show the number of immigration court removal orders climbed from about 50,000 during the initial months of the Trump Administration to about 60,000 from March through May 2026. Then, the number jumped to just under 79,000 in June.
In Texas immigration courts, Venezuelans accounted for the most pending cases, with 100,154 out of 321,006 — nearly a third. Mexicans accounted for another 69,719, followed by 41,626 Hondurans, 21,380 Cubans, 18,360 Colombians, 15,994 Guatemalans, 12,081 El Salvadorans, and 10,173 Nicaraguans.
In the Dallas immigration courts, Venezuelans accounted for the most pending cases, with 59,504. They were followed by Mexicans, with 33,754; Hondurans, with 15,884; Colombians, with 8,598; Guatemalans, with 6,912; and Cubans, with 5,831.
Court records also show that only 1.76 percent of new immigration cases filed this fiscal year seek deportation based on alleged criminal activity, apart from possible illegal entry.
Paul Hunker, a Dallas partner with De Mott McChesney Curtright & Armendáriz, said the Dallas area helped explain why so many noncitizens facing deportation are not accused of crimes.
“There are over 200,000 people with pending immigration court cases in the area,” said Hunker, who also serves as an adjunct professor at SMU Dedman School of Law. “And a lot of those people have to check in with ICE. And so when they check in, they get detained. I think that’s how you get a lot of non-criminals facing deportation. They think they will just check in, and they’ll be fine.”
Dallas grew from about 57,000 pending immigration cases in 2020 to more than 232,000 in early 2025, about a 300 percent jump. But it has fallen since.
Others contacted by The Lawbook said that the fact that only a small percentage of deportation orders were based on alleged criminal activity could be misleading.
“You may often be deported for the easiest things first,” Richard Roper, with Vartabedian Katz Hester & Haynes, said. “That may skew the statistics.”
Roper, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said non-citizens may have criminal charges. However, they may have been arrested and deported before their criminal case was adjudicated.
“I think it demonstrates that most people don’t get removed for alleged criminal violations. I think that’s true,” Roper said. “If you are illegally in the country and you commit a crime, they may not actually deport you for that. (Instead) They’ll just deport you for being out of status. They don’t have to do the criminal conviction route.”
New federal sentencing data showed that over 75 percent of cases prosecuted in federal courts in the Southern and Western districts of Texas over the past three fiscal years were immigration offenses, according to data compiled by The Lawbook from the United States Sentencing Commission.
That’s a jump in the proportion of immigration cases, from 63 percent for the two border judicial districts, over the past five fiscal years.
“There’s an emphasis on immigration and resources given for immigration,” said Matt Orwig, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas and now retired. “I think that shows the priorities.”
“The immigration effort is a focus of the Trump Administration,” added Hunker, a former chief counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “ICE attorneys are being detailed to the U.S. Attorney’s offices to be special assistant U.S. Attorneys, with more resources devoted to it.”
Only a small fraction, less than 13 percent, of cases sentenced in the other federal courts in the Northern and Eastern districts of Texas, which are farther from the border, were immigration offenses, according to sentencing data from the past three fiscal years.
Drug trafficking cases accounted for the largest category of non-immigration offenses — nearly half — in the Northern and Eastern districts, according to the data. Methamphetamine trafficking represented the largest share, followed by cocaine and fentanyl-related prosecutions.
“It really reflects the geography and demographics of each of those districts. The Western and Southern have enormous borders with Mexico. So, they’re the true border districts,” said Orwig, now retired. “When you think about it, the Border Patrol would be a lot more active in those districts, a lot more people apprehended, a lot more issues with immigration.”
“The border districts are going to have more immigration cases because of their proximity to the border,” added Roper, who heads up the white collar and investigations practice at Vartabedian.
In total, more than 35,189 of the 46,054 sentenced individuals from fiscal 2023 through fiscal 2025 were convicted of immigration offenses in the Southern and Western districts of Texas, which together cover the 1,254-mile Texas-Mexico border. The largest cities in the Western District are San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, and Midland. The Southern District covers Houston, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, McAllen and Laredo.
By comparison, only 736 of 7,015 sentenced individuals in the Northern and Eastern districts of Texas were convicted of immigration crimes.
When comparing the Eastern and Northern districts of Texas, there were also differences in the types of cases prosecuted. The Eastern District of Texas handled a disproportionately higher volume of sentences involving money laundering and drug trafficking, particularly powdered cocaine cases, than the Northern District. The Eastern District extends from Beaumont and Tyler to Texarkana and Collin County, including Plano, McKinney and Frisco.
In total, the Eastern District prosecuted 147 money laundering cases, compared with 37 in the Northern District. The Eastern District also had 376 powdered cocaine sentencing cases, compared with 193 in the Northern District.
The Northern District of Texas, which includes Dallas, Fort Worth, Lubbock and Amarillo, had more fentanyl, methamphetamine, and firearms sentencing cases.
There were 1,165 methamphetamine and 308 fentanyl prosecutions in the Northern District, compared with 705 methamphetamine and 123 fentanyl prosecutions in the Eastern District. The Northern District had 759 firearms sentences, compared with 455 in the Eastern District.
“In my experience, the high number of methamphetamine cases in NDTX is due to the intersection of so many interstate highways in the district, and specifically in Dallas/Fort Worth,” Leigha Simonton, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said in a written statement. “Methamphetamine is mostly made in Mexico these days, and the interstate highways are used to transport it from Mexico, then the intersection of those highways (as in DFW) are distribution points.”
Simonton, who is a Dallas member at Dykema Gossett, said firearms prosecutions have been an integral part of the Northern District.
“I think, traditionally, we might have had more of a focus on firearms offenses in NDTX than in other districts,” Simonton said. “We have always worked well with the Dallas DA’s office and DPD to identify firearms offenders with egregious criminal histories who were good candidates for a federal sentence, and we had prosecutors who were focused specifically on those offenses, including those focused on firearm offenders with domestic violence histories.”
The sentencing data also showed that a higher percentage of non-citizens were sentenced for non-immigration crimes in the Eastern and Northern District courts in Texas than in the Southern and Western District courts.
Nationally, non-citizens sentenced for crimes other than immigration offenses accounted for less than 10 percent of all federal sentencings over the past three fiscal years, according to the Sentencing Commission’s figures. The data broadly categorizes non-citizens, including legal permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, extradited foreign nationals, and individuals whose immigration status was unknown.
In fiscal 2025, federal courts sentenced 66,259 defendants nationwide. Of those, 28,886 were non-citizens, with 22,311 involved in immigration offenses, and 6,575 involved in other crimes. That meant non-citizens sentenced for non-immigration crimes accounted for about 9.9 percent of all federal sentencings. Similar annual percentages were recorded nationally, with 9.5 percent in fiscal 2024 and 9.1 percent in fiscal 2023.
The data showed that the Eastern District of Texas reported the state’s highest percentages of non-citizens sentenced for crimes other than immigration violations.
In fiscal 2025, the Eastern District reported 1,015 sentencings, including 171 non-citizens convicted of non-immigration crimes, which accounted for 16.8 percent of all sentencings in the district. The percentage was even higher in prior fiscal years, with 19.7 percent in fiscal 2023 and 19.9 percent in fiscal 2024.
The Northern District of Texas reported percentages ranging from 10.3 percent to 11.3 percent over the same three-year period.
In the Western District of Texas, 10,416 people were federally sentenced in fiscal 2025. Of those, 8,513 were non-citizens, including 1,385 convicted of crimes other than immigration offenses, representing 13.3 percent. The percentages were much lower in prior years: 3.8 percent in fiscal 2024 and 7.7 percent in fiscal 2023.
The Southern District of Texas reported 7,545 sentencings during the same period, including 5,685 immigration cases involving non-citizens, of which 412 were sentenced for crimes other than immigration offenses, representing 5.5 percent. The numbers were slightly higher in prior years: 8.2 percent in fiscal 2024 and 7.2 percent in fiscal 2023.