SCOTT MECHKOWSKI: Plenty never showed up at all. Immigration judges issued 485,456 removal orders in fiscal 2025, and according to the Congressional Research Service, 306,557 of them were in absentia. ICE is funded through 2029.

Check out my last op-ed in regards to Immigration law!👇👇 https://t.co/zuVl0oWZjg

— Scott Mechkowski (@ScottMechkowski) November 5, 2026

from Scott Mechkowski,

Start with the law itself. The Immigration and Nationality Act is one of the thickest statutes Congress has ever passed. Look at the grounds that make someone removable from this country, and you’ll find the criminal ones are a small slice: section 212(a)(2) on the inadmissibility side and section 237(a)(2) on the deportability side. Nearly everything else is non-criminal. Entering without inspection. Overstaying a visa. Visa fraud. Falsely claiming to be a citizen. Violating the terms of the visa you came in on.

That’s by design. Removal is a civil process. Congress never wrote an immigration law that only applies to criminals, and no president of either party has ever enforced one. The Obama administration removed 438,421 people in fiscal 2013. In 2014, Janet Murguía, head of the pro-amnesty National Council of La Raza, branded Obama the “deporter-in-chief” and complained that people with no criminal record were being sent home. She called the label a fact. She was right, and she made my point for me. Under the same law ICE enforces today, a Democratic president removed people who had never been convicted of anything, and Democrats in Washington kept writing the checks.

Talk about your due process.  It's endless.

Here’s what the word leaves out. A final order of removal is the end of the line, not the beginning. The alien was served a Notice to Appear with the charges and a hearing date. An immigration judge heard the case. He could bring a lawyer, present evidence, and apply for asylum, withholding of removal, protection under the Convention Against Torture, or cancellation of removal. If he lost, he could appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals and then to a federal circuit court. He could file motions to reopen and ask for a stay. Many were free on release the whole time, on the promise they’d show up and comply.   

Plenty never showed up at all. Immigration judges issued 485,456 removal orders in fiscal 2025, and according to the Congressional Research Service, 306,557 of them were in absentia. The alien didn’t come to court. Not for the hearing, and not for the asylum claim; many of them filed themselves. 

That’s how you end up with roughly 1.6 million aliens on ICE’s non-detained docket with final orders, up from 1.29 million in October 2023. These aren’t people waiting on a decision. The decision was made. They decided it didn’t apply to them.  

And a lot of these “non-criminals” aren’t even that. Entering the country illegally is a federal misdemeanor under 8 U.S.C. 1325. Willfully failing to depart after a final order is a federal crime under 8 U.S.C. 1253. In the headlines, “non-criminal” usually means never charged, not never broke the law. A man who has spent ten years defying an immigration judge’s order is a fugitive. If an American walked away from a court judgment for a decade, nobody would call his record clean.

Democrats won both houses of Congress on Tuesday, and they’ll spend the next two years holding hearings about “non-criminals.” Fine. Hold them. But section 241 of the INA directs the government to detain and remove aliens under final orders, and gives it 90 days to do it. ICE is funded through 2029. If Congress wants a criminals-only immigration law, it can try to pass one. Until then, ICE enforces the one on the books.