Justice View has released its first report, Dismantling Due Process: The Rise of Procedural Removal in U.S. Immigration Courts. The study, conducted by researchers from Princeton University and California State University, Long Beach, “examines how due process in U.S. Immigration Court is being systematically dismantled as merits adjudication is being replaced by a suite of mechanisms” that amount to what the authors call “procedural removal”—”removal from the United States based on a process determination instead of a full and fair consideration of the facts of a person’s claim to relief.” “What we see happening now is a kind of hollowing out of the content of immigration court while maintaining the facade of a judicial process,” said Princeton professor Amelia Frank-Vitale, a co-author of the report.
The report identifies four procedural mechanisms that prevent asylum claims from reaching a merits hearing: (1) claims are deemed abandoned through in absentia removal; (2) claims are foreclosed through pretermission, where immigration judges increasingly dismiss asylum applications before respondents receive a full evidentiary hearing; (3) claims are circumvented through Asylum Cooperative Agreements, through which respondents are required to challenge removal to countries where they have never lived, with little notice and limited time to prepare; and (4) claims are coerced into abandonment through detention.
The report makes four recommendations aimed at strengthening due process and ensuring fair adjudications in U.S. immigration courts: (1) remove the courts from the Department of Justice; (2) guarantee representation for those who cannot afford an attorney; (3) ensure a full and fair consideration of all claims; and (4) establish mechanisms of repair for due process violations.
Justice View is a national court-watching research initiative that combines sustained ethnographic observation with Executive Office for Immigration Review court data. According to the report, from January to August 2026, Justice in View observers conducted 1,300 hours of courtroom observation across 25 immigration courts and 107 courtrooms in 13 states and Puerto Rico, documenting how due process is enacted or denied in everyday practice. They observed 3,585 hearings, which represents 1.7 percent of the 210,569 total number of cases heard nationally over this period.
Under the second Trump administration, more than 25,000 people have been removed to more than 30 countries of which they are not citizens, according to a tracker from Refugees International and Human Rights First.
