The immigration court in Miami is important to foreign nationals facing deportation proceedings or hoping to be granted asylum in the U.S., as a recently published study claims the judges who work on that court (located at 333 S. Miami Avenue) are among the most lenient in the country when dealing with immigrants.
The report from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse states the Miami immigration court is one of the country’s top-five courts with judges who people consider to be more likely to let undocumented immigrants remain in the U.S., even when trial attorneys from the U.S. government representing the Department of Homeland Security seek deportation orders.
According to the new study, the most lenient immigration court in the U.S. is in Phoenix, which has allowed proportionately more individuals to stay in the U.S. than any other court in the country. The study ranked the New York immigration court in second place and Denver in third place. San Antonio was in fourth place, and Miami took fifth place.
The report notes there are various reasons why immigration courts may allow people to stay in the country, including a judge granting asylum or relief from removal due to a legal provision or finding that the U.S. government had failed to meet the burden of proof to demonstrate why it should deport the person in question. Miami immigration attorneys agreed with the findings, noting that Miami’s immigration judiciary was extremely diverse.