Nearly half a million immigrants stuck in U.S. courts

The record backlog in U.S. immigration courts has topped 500,000 cases, according to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.

The staggering backlog represents more than a 30 percent increase from two years ago, when a surge of Central American asylum seekers sparked a national crisis. The court system’s 500,051 pending cases is an increase of more than 40,000 since the beginning of the fiscal year nine months ago.

This month, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., questioned Attorney General Loretta Lynch about the growing court backlogs, noting the 806-day wait time in Los Angeles. Lynch said the Justice Department hired 21 new immigration judges last year, 36 so far this year, and more are in the hiring process.

“It is our hope this will help in not only dealing with priority issues but in dealing with the backlog,” Lynch said.

Judges at the nation’s 59 immigration courts now total 273, also a record high, but the rate of hiring growth has actually slackened, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. As of the end of June, each judge has an average of 1,819 pending cases—meaning it would take roughly 2 1/2 years to catch up, assuming no new cases arose.

A significant number of judges are eligible for retirement, and some say the high stress load contributes to burnout. Judges often have only six or seven minutes to decide serious cases that will determine a person’s or an entire family’s future. Immigration Judge Dana L. Marks says it’s “like doing death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.”

Recent attempts to boost immigration court infrastructure have fallen flat. In 2013, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have added 225 judges—roughly doubling the corps—but it died in the GOP-controlled House. Republican leaders argued immigration reform would be better dealt with in piecemeal fashion once they gained control of the Senate, but lawmakers have mostly focused on other issues.

In 2014, at the height of the child-migrant surge, President Barack Obama requested a $3.7 billion emergency funding package that would have added a modest 40 immigration court judges. Congress never came close to passing it.

As of the end of June, the backlog included 69,278 cases involving unaccompanied children. Those cases are considered a priority, but data show even that number is increasing.

Among states, the overall backlog is worst in California (93,466) and Texas (87,088).

“You have a lot of these Central American asylum seekers who have been coming up over the last couple of years, an entirely inefficient bureaucracy dealing with them, and increasing government penalties contributing to the backlog,” said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst with the Cato Institute.

Nowrasteh said viable solutions would channel migrants into the legal system, such as in-country processing for refugee status and a large guest-worker program targeted at Central Americans.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced several initiatives to address Central American migration, including in-country processing for those who want to apply for refugee status in the United States. The administration is also expanding the Central American Minors program, which allows certain lawfully present immigrants to petition for family members.

Some Republicans blasted the announcement as making the problems worse.

“Today’s expansion of the Obama administration’s policy is simply a continuation of the government-sanctioned border surge,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “Rather than take the steps necessary to end the ongoing crisis at the border, the Obama administration perpetuates it by abusing a legal tool meant to be used sparingly to bring people to the United States and instead applying it to the masses in Central America.”