In recent weeks, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) — the administrative tribunal that considers challenges to immigration decisions — has issued three opinions intended to speed resolution of removal hearings. Given that DHS must secure a removal order to deport aliens unlawfully present, it’s a positive development, though one that is years overdue. The age of de facto court-driven amnesties is nearing an end.
Administrative Closures and Continuances
Under section 241(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), DHS must secure a final removal order to deport an alien who is removable from the United States, either because the alien entered illegally, overstayed a nonimmigrant visa, or committed some act that renders the alien deportable.
In most cases, that process begins when DHS places a removable alien into “removal proceedings” under section 240 of the INA, during which an immigration judge (IJ) determines whether an alien (denominated the “respondent”) is removable as charged and should be removed.
Removal proceedings are a two-part process: (1) an IJ finding that the respondent is removable; and (2) an IJ decision on any applications for “relief”, i.e., any protection, benefit, or waiver that would allow the respondent to remain in the United States.
If the respondent is removable, and the IJ denies the respondent’s applications for relief, the IJ must order the alien removed.
As the Supreme Court has recognized, “in a deportation proceeding ... every delay works to the advantage of the deportable alien who wishes merely to remain in the United States”, and there are two common maneuvers respondents attempt to employ to delay that IJ decision process.
The first is a request for a continuance, which by regulation an IJ may grant “for good cause shown”.
Respondents may seek continuances to find counsel, to file applications for relief, and to pause IJ adjudications pending a decision from some third agency (usually USCIS) on an application that, if approved, would render the respondent eligible for IJ relief.
The second is “administrative closure”.
As a Biden-era regulation explains: “Administrative closure is the temporary suspension of a case. Administrative closure removes a case from the immigration court's active calendar until the case is recalendared. Recalendaring places a case back on the immigration court's active calendar.”
Note the use of the term “temporary” there, an administrative “gloss” (read: “fib”) that ignores the fact that, as DOJ admits elsewhere in statistical footnotes, “the average length of time a case has been administratively closed is 6,389 days (approximately 17.5 years) and the median length of time is 4,515 days (approximately 12.5 years)”.
Life is fleeting, so few would view an administrative delay that lasts three to four presidential terms (or Olympics) as a “temporary suspension”.
Matter of Pinzon Rozo
On March 11, the BIA issued an opinion in Matter of Pinzon Rozo, a case that involved a national of Colombia who entered the United States in December 2018 (when he was about 13 years old) as a nonimmigrant visitor with permission to remain for six months, which he overstayed.
In May 2025, shortly after he turned 20, Pinzon Rozo filed a “special immigrant juvenile” (SIJ) visa petition with USCIS, and shortly thereafter DHS placed him into removal proceedings.
To be granted an SIJ visa, aliens must show they are under the age of 21, unmarried, and possess “a valid juvenile court order issued by a state court in the United States” that is based on a finding the alien is a dependent of the state or the court, cannot be reunited with his or her parent or parents because of “abuse, abandonment, neglect, or” some similar “basis under state law”, and that it is not in the alien’s “best interests” to return to his or her home country.
USCIS approved Pinzon Rozo’s petition in November 2025, but SIJ visas are subject to a cap, and therefore he could only apply to receive a green card in his removal proceedings based on that approved petition “when an immigrant visa is immediately available”.
As the BIA explained, however, “visas for aliens classified as special immigrant juveniles are currently only available to aliens who filed their visa petition before July 15, 2021” — just less than four years before the respondent applied for his SIJ visa — but as the Board noted, such “priority dates” change, and sometimes get “pushed back” (a process known as “retrogression”).
Pinzon Rozo asked the IJ to either administratively close or continue his removal proceedings until his priority date became current. The court denied administrative closure but continued the alien’s removal hearing until February 2027. The government appealed.
“In determining whether good cause exists for a continuance based on the pendency of a collateral matter,” the BIA explained, an IJ “must focus principally on two factors: (1) the likelihood that the alien will receive the collateral relief, and (2) whether the relief will materially affect the outcome of the removal proceedings.”
Plainly, the ready availability of an SIJ visa would “materially affect the outcome of” Pinzon Rozo’s case because it would allow him to adjust his status and receive a green card.
The BIA concluded, however, that “the uncertain and potentially lengthy period of time until a visa would become available to the respondent, along with DHS’ opposition to the respondent’s motion for a continuance, strongly weigh against continuing removal proceedings”, as did the respondent’s failure to even seek an SIJ until nearly seven years after he arrived in this country.
On these bases, the Board concluded the IJ “erred in granting the respondent ... a continuance to await the availability of a visa, where the respondent’s priority date will not be current for an uncertain and lengthy period of time”, and sustained DHS’s appeal.
Matter of Ibarra-Vega
On February 27, the BIA issued an opinion in Matter of Ibarra-Vega, a case that involved an alien who has been in removal proceedings since 2010, more than 15 years.
For unknown reasons, DHS asked the IJ to administratively close the respondent’s case in August 2013, which the court granted less than a week later.
In June 2025, the department filed a motion to recalendar Ibarra-Vega’s removal proceedings, which the respondent opposed because more than seven years earlier, in May 2018, she had filed a petition for a nonimmigrant “U visa” with USCIS that had not yet been adjudicated.
The IJ denied the government’s request that the court return Ibarra-Vega’s case to its calendar, and the government appealed.
As USCIS explains, “The U nonimmigrant status (U visa) is set aside for victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are helpful to law enforcement or government officials in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity.”
In January 2026, however, my colleague Jessica Vaughan reported that more than 400,000 U visa petitions were pending as of June 2025, a problem because Congress in section 214(p)(2)(A) of the INA “set an annual cap of 10,000 issuances”.
As Vaughan explained, “Under current policies, in most cases simply filing a petition leads to eligibility for a work permit and protection from deportation”, which explains both the visa’s appeal and its vulnerability to abuse.
The BIA contended there was a much more modest backlog of just less than 250,000 pending U visa petitions, but regardless, it’s apparent that many aliens seeking that nonimmigrant status will die before their petitions are granted.
The BIA sustained DHS’s appeal, concluding that if a U visa “is not immediately available to a respondent and the record does not establish that one is likely to be available in the reasonably near future, administrative closure over” DHS’s objections is “inappropriate”.
And expanding on precedent holding that removal cases may only be administratively closed for “a reasonably short period of time”, the Board in Matter of Ibarra-Vega held that “absent unique circumstances specific to an individual case, administrative closure in excess of 6 months is presumptively unreasonable”.
The most critical finding in the BIA’s decision, however, is the following:
The Board and Immigration Judges have no authority to use administrative closure as a de facto extra-statutory form of relief that effectively grants amnesty to thousands of removable aliens because they may be eligible for a visa sometime in the future.
U visa status makes sense when it is granted within reasonable limits, but it has been abused by aliens seeking simply to remain here; the same is true of administrative closure, and each has been allowed to become its own form of “amnesty”. In the latter case, the BIA has had enough.
Matter of Medina Madrid
In that vein, on March 13, the BIA issued an opinion in Matter of Medina Madrid, yet another case involving administrative closure.
The respondent is a native of Mexico who entered illegally and was placed into removal proceedings more than two decades ago, in 2004.
She must have been here for a while, because in 2007, she filed an application for “cancellation of removal for certain nonpermanent residents” under section 240A(b)(1) of the INA, also known as “42B cancellation” after the EOIR application form for that relief.
To be granted 42B cancellation, Medina Madrid must show she’s been present in the United States for at least 10 years prior to seeking that relief, has been a person of “good moral character” during that period, hasn’t been convicted of certain criminal offenses, and that her removal “would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to” her “spouse, parent, or child, who is a citizen of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence”.
For unknown reasons, DHS filed a motion to administratively close her removal proceedings, which the IJ granted in January 2013.
Six years later, Medina Madrid married a green card holder, and USCIS approved an immigrant visa petition her spouse filed on her behalf in November 2024.
Because she entered illegally, Medina Madrid cannot “adjust her status” — that is receive a green card — while she is in the United States, but must instead leave and undergo consular processing abroad.
Her problem is that she would be inadmissible for 10 years if she left and attempted to return under section 212(a)(9)(B) of the INA because she has been here illegally for more than a year, so she has begun the process to file an I-601A, “Application for Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver” to waive that 10-year bar.
In June 2025, DHS filed a motion with the IJ to recalendar this case, which the respondent opposed because she has the pending I-601A and doesn’t want to leave until it is approved.
The IJ denied the government’s request because Medina Madrid “is actively pursuing collateral relief”, and DHS appealed.
The BIA described the likelihood the respondent would obtain an I-601A waiver as “speculative” because “she has yet to file an application with USCIS” and concluded that Medina Madrid’s “desire to continue delaying removal proceedings based on her speculative eligibility to pursue a provisional unlawful presence waiver sometime in the future is not a persuasive reason against recalendaring”.
“Under these circumstances”, the BIA held, “further administrative closure exceeds all reasonable interpretations of a temporary period”, and on that basis, reversed the IJ and recalendered Medina Madrid’s case.
The BIA and IJs “Have no Role in DHS’ Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion”
In its June 2025 opinion in Matter of B-N-K-, the Board made two critical findings that set the stage for these three opinions.
First, “Removal proceedings are adversarial in nature, and the role of Immigration Judges and the Board is to adjudicate whether an alien is removable and eligible for relief from removal in cases brought by DHS.”
Second, and relatedly, the BIA concluded:
The Board and Immigration Judges have no role in DHS’ exercise of prosecutorial discretion, including its decision to institute proceedings against an alien and to prosecute those proceedings to a conclusion. “Once deportation proceedings have been initiated by DHS, the immigration judge may not review the wisdom of DHS’ action, but must execute his duty to determine whether the deportation charge is sustained by the requisite evidence in an expeditious manner.”
If, as the Supreme Court has recognized, “every delay works to the advantage of the deportable alien who wishes merely to remain in the United States”, any rule or decision that improperly delays a final removal order improperly favors the alien, to the disadvantage of the law and the American people, who have a right to have the law enforced.
In three recent decisions, the BIA has placed restraints on “continuances” and “administrative closures”, maneuvers that aliens, judges, and — at times — the government have used to impede the swift adjudication of the immigration laws. Expect quicker removal orders, shorter hearing times, and a rapid decline in the immigration courts’ crushing backlog to follow.