{"id":1676,"date":"2026-05-04T16:12:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/?page_id=1676"},"modified":"2026-05-04T16:12:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:12:49","slug":"ice-un-documented-how-campos-chaves-allows-ice-to-disobey-congress-with-defective-notices-to-appear","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-40-number-2-winter-2026\/ice-un-documented-how-campos-chaves-allows-ice-to-disobey-congress-with-defective-notices-to-appear\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE Un-Documented: How Campos-Chaves Allows ICE to Disobey Congress with Defective Notices to Appear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The issuance of defective Notices to Appear (\u201cNTA\u201d), the charging document in immigration court, has become a recurrent and systemic failure in the contemporary U.S. immigration system. Under INA \u00a7 239(a)(1)(G)(i), an NTA must specify the time and place of removal proceedings. Despite clear statutory language, ICE routinely issues NTAs that omit one or both of these critical details, and thereby undermines the procedural protections Congress intended NTAs to contain as the charging and case-initiating documents for noncitizens in removal proceedings. Courts have recognized that the absence of a statutorily compliant NTA can jeopardize noncitizens\u2019 ability to attend immigration court proceedings. This ICE malfeasance exposes noncitizens to \u201cin absentia\u201d removal orders, which effectively deprive them of notice, due process, and rights guaranteed under federal law and in immigration court. ICE\u2019s practices have generated considerable litigation, including three U.S. Supreme Court decisions in <em>Pereira<\/em> (2018), <em>Niz-Chavez<\/em> (2021), and <em>Campos-Chaves<\/em> (2024). This article examines the consequences of ICE\u2019s failure to comply with the statutory notice requirements mandated by INA \u00a7 239, including illustrative case examples from Hofstra Law School\u2019s Deportation Defense Clinic, demonstrating how defective NTAs prejudice noncitizens. One clinic client is \u201cMaria,\u201d whose story was previously described in <em>The ICE Trap: Deportation Without Due Process<\/em>, published in the UCLA Law Review. Another clinic client, \u201cOscar,\u201d is introduced in this article. Oscar\u2019s case was described in an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in <em>Campos-Chaves<\/em>. This article concludes with proposed solutions to address the pervasive problem of ICE disobeying Congress by issuing defective NTAs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2026\/05\/GT-GILJ260013.pdf\">Continue reading ICE Un-Documented: How <em>Campos-Chaves <\/em>Allows ICE to Disobey Congress with Defective Notices to Appear<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The issuance of defective Notices to Appear (\u201cNTA\u201d), the charging document in immigration court, has become a recurrent and systemic failure in the contemporary U.S. immigration system. Under INA \u00a7 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"parent":1666,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1676","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1677,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1676\/revisions\/1677"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/immigration-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}