Pending immigration appeals in the United States increased by 61% during the fiscal year 2026, despite the historic record of cases resolved by the first-instance immigration courts, according to statistics from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which is part of the Department of Justice.
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) ended the period with 325,774 pending appeals, while immigration courts completed nearly 974,000 cases, the highest number ever recorded in the agency's history.
Record of cases resolved in the first instance
The EOIR reported in a statement published on October 29 that its courts completed 973,669 cases during the fiscal year 2026, covering the period from October 1, 2025, to September 30, 2026.
The agency also hired more than 300 permanent immigration judges during that period, another institutional record.
According to the EOIR, the inventory of pending cases before the trial courts has decreased by more than 678,000 files since January 2025.
Despite this decrease, the statistical tables generated on October 22 recorded 3,300,793 pending cases before the first instance courts.
The completed cases correspond to proceedings concluded before immigration judges.
That figure does not equate to the number of deportations nor necessarily to the number of individuals, as the same person may have more than one record.
Pending appeals increase by 61%
The BIA reviews the appealed decisions of immigration judges, generally in writing and without holding new hearings.
Their files are counted separately from the first-instance proceedings.
According to the official EOIR statistics, the BIA completed 46,374 appeals during fiscal year 2026, its highest volume of resolutions in 20 years. However, it received 169,538 new appeals, more than three and a half times the number it was able to resolve.
At the close of the fiscal year on September 30, the pending appeals totaled 325,774, compared to the 202,819 recorded at the end of 2025.
The difference represents an additional 122,955 files, an increase of 60.6%.
What does it mean for Cuban immigrants?
The increase in pending appeals also impacts the system to which Cubans turn when challenging immigration decisions before the BIA, although the agency's overall statistics do not allow for determining how many citizens of that nationality have pending cases.
As a general rule, those who wish to appeal an immigration judge's decision to the BIA must submit Form EOIR-26 within 30 calendar days following the decision.
A timely filed appeal usually automatically suspends the execution of the deportation order while it is being resolved, although there are exceptions and procedures to which this protection does not apply.
According to estimates from specialized lawyers, the processing of an appeal can take between two and three years.
The EOIR statistics, however, do not allow for the establishment of individual resolution timelines.
As a reference for the delay in the first instance, the average waiting time for pending cases before immigration courts reached 940 days in July 2026, compared to the 571 days recorded in July 2024, according to data from the TRAC analysis center at Syracuse University. This indicator does not reflect the duration of appeals before the BIA.
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