5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable
Order ICE to stop closing out pending immigration cases
Printed page 141 5. Department of Homeland Security
“Order ICE to stop closing out pending immigration cases and apply the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as written by Congress.”
What has happened
- Not started
No order directing ICE to stop closing out pending immigration cases was found on an allowlisted source. The department's 2025 practice moved the other way in form — ICE trial attorneys moved to dismiss pending proceedings so that people could be put into expedited removal instead, a manoeuvre the D.D.C. described in Make the Road New York v. Noem — which is the opposite of applying the INA's removal-proceeding machinery as written.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Instrument sought: an ICE or OPLA directive ending administrative closure and the dismissal of pending removal cases.
Searched, in records current to 2026-08-28: presidential documents, final rules, proposed rules and notices in the Federal Register from DHS and its components; bills and public laws in Congress, from congress.gov; White House presidential actions; and federal court dockets (CourtListener), including the bulk snapshot of 1.2 million dockets. Federal Register full-text search for “administrative closure” and “prosecutorial discretion” over DHS, DOJ and EOIR rulemaking in the window returns nothing on point (the hits are the biometrics, asylum-EAD and BIA appellate rules). ICE policy memoranda are not published on an allowlisted index and could not be read.
- EO 14159 section 16 directs the Secretary to rescind prior-administration policy decisions generally, but it does not name administrative closure, so under the rule that progress is measured on this ask it is noted rather than cited.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- ICE administrative closure of immigration cases
- ID
- 308