The influx of children and mothers
from Central America last summer has caused an even larger backlog in an already overtaxed immigration court system,
according to a Syracuse University study.
The backlog hit a record 445,607 at the end of April, according to the report, a rise of 9.2 percent since the beginning of the current fiscal year.
The backlog has risen 29.5 percent since the beginning of fiscal year 2014, the report said, when it was at 344,230 cases.
The backlog existed even before the well-publicized cases of mothers with children and unaccompanied minors flooding into the southern border a year ago from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But those cases have received expedited "rocket docket" status, pushing older cases off.
Some now aren't scheduled to be heard until 2019.
Some immigrants who expect to be deported once their cases are heard are happy with the wait,
The Dallas Morning News reports. But that isn't so for others, who expect to win their cases and be allowed to stay in the country.
"We see people coming into our office every day whose lives are being negatively impacted by this," Jonathan Ryan, executive director of the San Antonio-based legal advocacy group Raices,
told the Los Angeles Times.
Ryan gave the example of a Syrian family unable to work until their case is heard in 2019.
"Their whole family is in a state of paralysis or suspense because they can’t move forward in the backlog," Ryan said. "The people being prioritized in the backlog are the most vulnerable children and mothers who are essentially getting railroaded. The prioritization is backwards."
Most of the cases making up the backlog are from Mexico, the report says, but those cases have risen only 3.7 percent since fiscal 2014. Cases among people from Honduras are up 142.7 percent, while those from El Salvador are up 92.4 percent and Guatemala 62.5 percent.
Backlogged cases of people from China fell 2.4 percent.
Another contributor to the backlog is a low number of immigration judges. The high workload has them retiring as soon as they are eligible.
"The pace of these cases continues to be relentless, particularly as the administration has chosen to prioritize recent arrivals,” San Francisco immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks told the Times.
"It means that my pending caseload just gets pushed to the back, which is problematic in its own right because often there are compelling issues in those cases," she said. "People lose track of witnesses, a qualifying relative may pass away or become an adult, where it’s required the person be a child to confer a benefit."
Currently serving as president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, Marks expects a "tsunami" of retirements and is calling for 100 more judges to be hired.
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