Vera Institute of Justice

As policy changes and global events constantly shift the immigration landscape, this tool—updated monthly—provides the most recent statistics on cases before U.S. immigration courts and the state of legal representation among people facing deportation.

The U.S. immigration court system, run by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), has a mission to “adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering” the law.¹ However, the U.S. immigration system is outdated, and systemic failures have led to a large backlog of cases waiting to be adjudicated. As of August 2026, there was a backlog of 3.1 million deportation cases pending in immigration court in the United States. This represents a 10 percent decrease from the year prior.

The consequences of losing a deportation case can be devastating. Deportation can tear families and communities apart, and many people are sent back to places where their safety or livelihoods may be at risk. However, while the federal government provides lawyers for people who cannot afford one in criminal court, it does not do the same for people in immigration court. Despite increased momentum for legal services support at the state and local level—where investments in deportation defense have nearly doubled from approximately $260 million in 2025 to more than $500 million nationwide in 2027—many people still lack access to counsel due to the lack of a federal public defender system in immigration court. People deserve to be treated with fairness and due process, but right now, many people facing deportation are forced to navigate the complex U.S. immigration system alone against highly trained government lawyers, without anyone to explain their rights or to defend them. Across the United States, 67 percent of people facing deportation in immigration court lack legal counsel. For people in immigration detention facing deportation, securing legal representation can be even more challenging.

The table below includes national- and state-level data on people in deportation proceedings and the number and percentage who are unrepresented. States with at least one immigration court are included in the table. The data is available for all people facing deportation, as well as for only people in immigration detention. The last column of the table allows users to see how these counts have changed over the past month or year.

¹Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), “About the Office,”
https://www.justice.gov/eoir/about-office.

Update 10/14/2026: Top-line findings on unaccompanied children have been added below the table.

Upcoming additional statistics on children in court are forthcoming on this site in October 2026. For additional queries, please contact media@vera.org.

12 Things We Know from U.S. Immigration Court Data (August 2026)

1. There are 3.1 million pending deportation cases in U.S. immigration courts. The number of pending cases decreased 12 percent over the past 12 months. Among pending cases, people in 1.5 million cases (49 percent) were navigating their deportation proceedings alone with no lawyer to defend them.
   
2. Across the United States, 550,000 new deportation cases began in the past 12 months.
   
3. According to EOIR data, more than 32,600 people in immigration detention are currently facing deportation in immigration court.
   
4. Among detained people facing deportation in immigration court, 51 percent have no attorney to advise them of their rights, advocate for their release from detention, or help them exercise their rights in their deportation cases.
   
5. Of the more than 700,000 people who were ordered removed in immigration court over the past 12 months, 67 percent lacked legal representation.
   
6. More than 780,000 children were facing deportation in immigration court in the past 12 months. Over 57 percent of these children had no attorney.
   
7. Many people who enter the country without inspection have a legal right to remain in the United States. Over the past 12 months, in 61 percent of deportation proceedings people were charged with entering the country without inspection. Among cases that closed within the past 12 months, 17 percent of people facing deportation for having entered without inspection who had a lawyer to represent them were permitted to remain in the United States.
   
8. Among all people in deportation proceedings over the past three years, just 16 percent have received orders of removal in absentia.
   
9. Appearance rates are even higher for people represented by counsel. Among people in immigration court who had a lawyer, 96 percent continued to appear for their court hearings, and just 4 percent received orders of removal in absentia.
   
10. People facing deportation in immigration court can be waiting in limbo for a case decision for years. Among cases that closed in the past three years, people waited on average more than two years for their case to reach even an initial decision.
    
11. An estimated 84 percent of all unaccompanied children's cases completed in August 2026 resulted in outcomes that required their departure from the United States. This compares to 54 percent in August 2025 and 33 percent in August 2024.
    
12. Of the estimated 49,900 unaccompanied children's cases completed so far in 2026, 55 percent never had representation in immigration court. This is up seven percentage points from 2025 and 17 percentage points from 2024.

About the Data

• In the tables above, the state of the immigration court associated with each removal proceeding corresponds to the location of the immigration court where the immigration judge’s initial disposition was issued, or the location of the most recent scheduled hearing if the case is still pending, as indicated in the EOIR data. There are no immigration courts in the following U.S. states and territories in this dataset: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mexico, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Washington, DC, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
• The counts in this table are only of proceedings labeled type “RMV”—or what Vera interprets to be removal proceedings. A removal proceeding is considered to be “Unrepresented” if the data shows there is no EOIR-28 Notice of Entry of Appearance as Attorney or Representative form ever associated with the case. In other words, an “Unrepresented” person was never represented, and a “Represented” person was represented at some point in time.
• A removal proceeding is considered to be “Detained” if the person was in immigration detention at the time of the immigration judge’s initial disposition or remains in immigration detention if the case is still pending.
• “Pending Cases” refers to removal proceedings without an initial disposition by an immigration judge. “Cases Filed in Past 5 Years” refers to removal proceedings with a Notice to Appear (NTA) filing date within the five years preceding the month and year of the selected dataset. “All Cases Since FY2001” refers to removal proceedings with a NTA filing date after September 30, 2000.
• When calculating change over time for “All Cases Total”, “Detained Cases Total”, “All Cases Unrepresented”, and “Detained Cases Unrepresented”, the percentage change is given. When calculating change over time for “All Cases % Unrepresented” and “Detained Cases % Unrepresented”, the change in percentage points is given. For example, suppose there were 10,000 total proceedings (“All Cases Total”) with 50 percent unrepresented (“All Cases % Unrepresented”) in January, and 11,000 total proceedings with 55 percent unrepresented in February. The "% Change Over Last Month" in total proceedings is (11,000 – 10,000) / 10,000 = 0.10 = +10%. The "Change Over Last Month" in percentage unrepresented is 55% - 50% = 5% = +5 pp.
• Note that even small changes in the number of removal proceedings can cause large percent changes when the volume of cases is low. It is therefore important to consider the volume of cases in an area when contextualizing representation rates. This is especially important to consider when comparing states based on percent changes over time. For example, a monthly increase from one removal proceeding to two removal proceedings, representing an increase of +100%, might not be as noteworthy as an increase from 20,000 to 30,000 proceedings, representing an increase of +50%.
• The September 2025 tables are based on EOIR's October 2025 dataset because EOIR did not release a September 2025 dataset during the federal government shutdown.
• The EOIR data does not disaggregate data on unaccompanied children. For this reason, in order conduct any analyses specific to unaccompanied children in immigration court, researchers and data scientists—working together with immigration attorneys and legal scholars—must develop methodologies to identify people who are likely unaccompanied children within the datasets. Vera’s methodology is adapted from the Galli and Padilla (2025) paper, “New Data on Unaccompanied Minors in US Immigration Court (2009-2023).” While estimates of unaccompanied children largely align across many different institutions developing these methodologies, exact magnitudes may differ slightly due to minor methodological differences. “Unaccompanied Children” estimates in the table above are not disaggregated by custody status and include both children in immigration detention and children released to sponsors.
• Vera identified “All Children” in the EOIR data by comparing their given birth date with the date listed on their Notice to Appear form, the charging document which begins their immigration proceedings. “All Children” include both children who are part of a family unit and children who Vera identifies as likely unaccompanied. Vera included in “All Children” counts of people under the age of 18. The EOIR data only provides birth month and birth year. In the table above, Vera provides a conservative estimate of the number of “All Children” by assuming a person’s birth date to be on the first day of their birth month. The counts provided likely underestimate the number of children in immigration court because the data contains some missingness in the birth date field. Because the children’s data is estimated, Vera rounds the totals to the nearest 10 in the table presenting data on children. Data for jurisdictions where the unrounded value sums to 50 or below—or where either the “Unrepresented” or “Represented” value for that jurisdiction sum to 50 or below—are not presented, as indicated by an asterisk (*).
• Because the EOIR data contains a degree of missingness in the birth date fields, and because Vera rounded the data on “All Children” in removal proceedings, the number of adults in removal proceedings should not be inferred by merely subtracting the number of “All Children” from the number of “All People.” Doing so would include the number of removal proceedings of adults as well as removal proceedings for a group of people for whom the birth date—and hence status as child or adult—is unknown. A simple difference of “All People” minus “All Children” would therefore risk over-estimating the number of adults in removal proceedings.

Data source: Executive Office for Immigration Review, “EOIR Case Data (August 2026),” database (Falls Church, VA: Executive Office for Immigration Review), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/foia-library-0.