The June immigration court numbers contain a warning wrapped inside good news. Closures hit an all-time record of 100,773, and removal orders jumped 30 percent to nearly 79,000. But 68 percent of those orders were issued in absentia — to people who were released into the interior under past policies and never appeared in court.

That is what catch-and-release actually produces: not a functioning legal process, but a backlog of paper orders against people who vanished into the country years earlier. The court system still holds 3.2 million pending cases, and new filings have grown from 31,000 to 52,000 a year over year. Productivity alone cannot dig out of a hole that release policies keep refilling.

H.R. 9773, the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act, would close the pipeline at its source — requiring detention so respondents appear at their hearings, strengthening the credible-fear screening that keeps meritless claims off the docket, and ending the parole abuse that fed the backlog. The House is moving the bill through committee now. When it passes, please be ready to take it up immediately, and help give Americans an immigration system whose orders are worth the paper they’re printed on.

Greg Raven, Apple Valley, CA

Sent to:
Alex Padilla, Adam Schiff