The population of immigrants who lack legal status in the U.S. has remained steady over the past several years. The number of immigration court filings, however, increased by more than 12 percent last year.
In fiscal year 2014, the Department of Homeland Security filed almost 223,000 applications for removal orders in immigration court. That’s according to a new report released by the data center Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Of the total applications, fewer were based on criminal activity, decreasing by about 20,000 since 2013.
The nation’s backlog of pending cases rose again in 2014 though. That total reached almost 422,000, a nearly 27 percent increase from the year before.
