New data from U.S. immigration courts for 2017 show many of the illegal immigrants released before trial never show up for court, resulting in tens of thousands slipping through the system each year.

The Center for Immigration Studies broke down the 2017 figures recently provided to Congress by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a Justice Department agency that manages immigration courts, and the data shows the broken system is still broken.

Immigration policy analyst Mark Metcalf, formerly with the George W. Bush Justice Department, reports that a total of 43 percent of all aliens free pending trial – or 41,302 out of 95,342 – did not show up for court in 2017. For unaccompanied children, it was 49 percent.

According to Metcalf:

American immigration courts consistently have the highest failure to appear (FTA) rates of any state or federal courts in the country. From 1996 through 2017, 37 percent of all aliens free pending trial disappeared. From the 2,680,598 foreign national that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released on their own recognizance, 1,320,000 received deportation orders, 75 percent of them (993,593) for failure to appear. …

On average, more than 45,000 people each year disappeared from court since 1996, making failures to appear the single greatest source of deportation orders in the immigration court system.

Metcalf explained that the number of deportation orders for court no-shows outnumber those issued through a trial by three to one, a significant problem he attributes to a double standard baked into the criminal justice system that gives illegal immigrants an incentive to simply disappear.

“Only in J.S. immigration courts can litigants literally abandon their cases without fear of incarceration or removal, while litigants in nearly any other state or federal court risk arrest, contempt, and new charges for the same conduct,” he wrote.

“Federal law … imposes penalties from one year all the way to 15 years or more (in prison) for absconding from a U.S. district court or circuit court of appeals. Not so in federal immigration courts. Rarely, if at all, are aliens held accountable for the same misconduct that in other court systems would land them – or citizens – in jail and in some instances brand them as felons.”

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The data confirming the continued problems plaguing immigration courts is one element of a broader immigration crisis fueled by rampant illegal crossings on the southern border.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations Report for Fiscal Year 2018 shows the agency made a total of 158,581 administrative arrests last year, and 66 percent of those apprehended were convicted criminals.

In total, the agency removed 256,085 illegal immigrants, 56 percent with criminal records.

“In FY2018, ERO arrested 158,581 aliens, 90% of whom had criminal convictions (66%), pending criminal charges (21%), or previously issued final orders (3%),” according to ICE. “The overall arrest figure represents an 11% increase over FY2017.”

ICE makes it clear things are not getting any better.

“The number of individuals detained by ERO is driven by enforcement actions taken by ICE and apprehensions made by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). In FY2018, 396,448 people were initially booked into an ICE detention facility, an increase of 22.5% over FY2017,” according to the report. “Book-ins to detention resulting from CBP arrests increased by 32% over the previous year, illustrating a surge in illegal border crossings. ICE’s interior enforcement efforts resulted in a 10% increase in book-ins resulting from ICE arrests.”