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Voices of NY
January 30, 2018

Delays in NY Immigration Courts on the Rise
By Edwin Martínez


New York’s immigration courts are bursting at the seams with the constant influx of cases. This has not only worsened the existing delays in pending proceedings but also pushed a number of counties in New York City and Long Island to the top of the list of the 100 areas with the highest number of immigrants awaiting a court’s reply in the country. Three areas in the state – Queens, Brooklyn and Suffolk – are among the top five counties with the most cases. This was revealed by a recent study created by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University, which determined that delays in immigration courts at a national level increased 11 percent last year, reaching a historic record of 667,839 pending cases as of December of last year. Even though these proceedings are spread across courts in more than 2,500 counties, the New York metro area and Long Island have 80,000 stalled cases, representing nearly 12 percent of the country’s total. The number of pending proceedings increased 6 to 14 percent. Los Angeles is at the top of the list with 44,634 cases, while Harris County in Texas has 39,193, followed by New York’s Queens County with 27,659 pending cases, Brooklyn with 15,922, Suffolk with 13,127, Nassau with 10,051 cases, the Bronx with 7,521, Westchester with 4,789, and Manhattan with 3,577 pending proceedings. Staten Island ranked #97 with 1,400 cases.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
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