NTA (Notice to Appear)

The Notice to Appear (NTA) is the foundational charging document in immigration court proceedings — it is the formal instrument by which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiates removal proceedings against a noncitizen. The NTA is analogous to an indictment or complaint in criminal or civil court and serves as the jurisdictional basis for the immigration court to hear the case.

An NTA contains several required elements: the respondent's identifying information, the factual allegations underlying the charges (such as entering without inspection, overstaying a visa, or committing a criminal offense), the specific statutory charges of removability under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the time and place of the initial hearing. The NTA must be served on the respondent and filed with the immigration court to vest the court with jurisdiction.

NTAs are issued by various DHS components, primarily ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The circumstances triggering an NTA issuance vary widely — from border apprehensions to interior arrests to referrals from USCIS when an application is denied.

A significant legal development in recent years has been the Supreme Court's interpretation of NTA requirements. In *Pereira v. Sessions* (2018), the Court held that an NTA that does not specify the time and place of the hearing does not trigger certain legal consequences. This decision spawned extensive litigation about "defective" NTAs, as DHS has historically issued many NTAs without complete hearing information (adding the date later via a separate notice).

The volume of NTAs issued has enormous downstream effects on immigration courts. Spikes in NTA filings — often corresponding to surges in border encounters or changes in enforcement priorities — create waves of new cases that exacerbate the court backlog, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of cases in a single year.