How many lawful permanent residents were placed in removal proceedings (not necessarily deported) in 2025 according to EOIR case data?
Executive summary
The available EOIR materials in the provided reporting do not contain a clear, single-line figure for how many lawful permanent residents (LPRs were) placed in removal proceedings in calendar year 2025; EOIR case data releases cited here reference broad case counts and data snapshots but do not break out an explicit 2025 LPR‑in‑proceedings total in the documents supplied [1] [2] [3]. As a result, a definitive numeric answer cannot be produced from these sources alone; the public EOIR FOIA downloads and ACIS system are the logical next places to query for that specific breakdown [2] [3].
1. What the provided EOIR materials do show about caseload scale
EOIR and analysts describe an immense and growing immigration court caseload—Congressional Research Service reporting notes nearly 1.8 million new cases in FY2024 and a backlog in the millions at the end of FY2024, framing the scale of proceedings in which LPRs could appear [4]. Public analyses and trackers also report hundreds of thousands of case completions and millions pending in 2025 reporting windows, illustrating the volume of immigration court activity but without isolating LPR counts for 2025 specifically in the supplied documents [5] [6].
2. What the supplied EOIR files and memos do not provide — the missing LPR tally
The specific question—how many lawful permanent residents were placed in removal proceedings in 2025—is not answered by the supplied EOIR FOIA summary documents and advisories: the files referenced here discuss pending cases, administrative policies, and general case volumes but do not publish a single aggregated 2025 LPR‑placement number in the excerpts provided [1] [7] [2]. EOIR’s public Automated Case Information System exists to query case status but is not quoted here as delivering that aggregate LPR statistic in the materials supplied [3].
3. Why the dataset can be hard to mine for an LPR count and reasonable proxies
EOIR’s public datasets and FOIA releases often categorize proceedings by case outcome, charge, or docket status, and analysts have noted that meaningful breakdowns require downloading and coding raw case‑level files rather than relying on headline PDFs—an approach the American Immigration Council used when noting the most recent available update as April 2025 at the time of their analysis [2]. Consequently, extracting the number of LPRs placed into proceedings in 2025 typically requires either direct queries of EOIR’s FOIA library/case data tables or filtering case‑level records for respondents whose status field indicates lawful permanent resident, a task not completed in the documents provided here [2] [1].
4. Competing narratives, institutional incentives, and reporting limits
Advocates, researchers, and government summaries emphasize different slices of EOIR data—some highlight removal orders or backlog growth, others emphasize relief granted or dismissals—creating narratives that can obscure targeted counts like “LPRs placed in proceedings”; EOIR and oversight bodies have also noted resource strains and data challenges that complicate public reporting [6] [8]. Those pushing for transparency want disaggregated demographic and status data; institutional actors balancing privacy, case complexity, and litigation risk may produce less granular public summaries, which helps explain why the supplied materials stop short of the requested 2025 LPR tally [7] [8].
5. Where to look next and the bottom line answer
The bottom line: the provided EOIR documents and secondary analyses do not include a direct count of how many lawful permanent residents were placed in removal proceedings in 2025, so a definitive number cannot be confirmed from these sources alone [1] [2] [3]. To obtain that figure, the appropriate next steps are to query EOIR’s case‑level FOIA data/downloads (the FOIA library referenced by analysts) or ACIS exports and filter respondent status to isolate LPRs for the 2025 time window, since those are the systems and files identified in the supplied reporting as containing the underlying case data [2] [3].