After hitting a low during the first Trump administration, immigration courts are reporting a big jump in illegal migrants skipping their court dates for asylum and deportation hearings.

In a new Government Accountability Office report, the rise in no-shows by illegal immigrants has jumped to 34%, up from a low during President-elect Donald Trump’s last year in office.

The no-show rate varied widely depending on an immigration court’s rate of granting asylum. For example, the rate of illegal immigrants skipping out was highest in Charlotte, North Carolina, at 68%. However, the court in that area also denies asylum at a higher rate than most courts, at 88%.

In an analysis of the new GAO data, former federal immigration judge Andrew R. Arthur said it just makes sense that those facing deportation skip their court date so that they can stay in the United States, though illegally.

Arthur, who is now with the Center for Immigration Studies, said in his analysis, “Aliens with no hope of staying legally are less likely to show up for court and will opt instead to skip out and remain illegally. Respectfully, that’s just common sense.”

Trump promised to beef up staffing at immigration courts to clear a several yearslong backlog and to increase arrests of no-show illegal immigrants once in office. He has also promised to start an epic deportation regime, but getting migrants in and out of deportation courts will have to come first for many.

“For the immigration-court system to work, they must first appear. The problem is that more than a third simply don’t,” said Arthur.

Under Biden, the situation of illegal immigrants skipping their court dates for asylum and deportation hearings surged and should be considered a scandal, said Arthur.

“That would be a national scandal if only more people understood how it worked, and it will likely take the incoming administration at least a year to uncover just how bad things at the courts have been for the past four years,” he wrote.

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In perspective, said Arthur, the situation shouldn’t be too surprising since Biden let in more illegal immigrants but didn’t hire many more immigration judges to hear the new asylum requests.

“Given there were nearly 3.6 million pending removal cases before the nation’s 735 immigration judges at the end of FY 2024 (a backlog of more than 2,000 cases per judge), the immigration court system is teetering on the brink of disaster. GAO doesn’t offer a path out of this miasma, but at least it offers some facts on what’s currently happening that Trump 2.0 can look to for solutions,” he concluded.