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Texas immigration courts have the highest backlog in the country with about 89,000 pending cases. This means immigrants and asylum seekers must now wait for nearly five years to have their cases heard.
The number of cases pending in the Houston court grew by almost 460 percent between 2010 and 2016, ballooning from 6,423 to 36,136. To make matters worse, there are only six immigration judges on the bench in Houston and this court could see its caseload double by fiscal year 2019.
Other States
Many other states have growing backlogs, which mean that immigrants are waiting longer to have their cases resolved. California, for instance, has a whopping backlog, with 82,000 cases pending, according to an analysis of court records by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Immigrants in New York can expect to wait at least two and a half years for the court to consider their case. In Maryland, the wait is nearly two years, and in Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, and California, the wait ranges between three and three and a half years.
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