TRAC-Reports
Immigration Court Priority Family Case Backlog Surpasses 100,000
(17 Jan 2017) The number of judges is still insufficient to handle the growing backlog in the Immigration Court. The court's crushing workload reached a record-breaking 533,909 pending cases as the court closed out calendar year 2016, up 4.2 percent in just the last four months.

The problem is particularly acute for priority cases involving women with children according to the latest court data updated through the end of December 2016 and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. Pending priority cases for these families jumped by more than 20 percent (21.9%) in just the last four months. The backlog of these family cases alone totaled 102,342 last month, surpassing 100,000 cases for the first time.

The number of pending priority cases involving unaccompanied children also has continued to climb, reaching 75,582 at the December 2016. Together with family cases, this priority workload now accounts for fully one third (33%) of the court's overall record backlog.

For more details, including the top ten states with the largest overall Immigration Court backlog, see this month's snapshot report at:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/snap_backlog/

For cumulative details through December 2016 of priority cases since July 2014 involving women with children see:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/mwc/

Many of TRAC's free query tools - which track new DHS filings, court backlogs, the handling of juvenile cases and much more - have now been updated through November 2016. For an index to the full list of TRAC's immigration tools go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

Customized queries of TRAC's data TRAC FBI Web Site TRAC DEA Web Site TRAC Immigration Web Site TRAC IRS Web Site TRAC ATF Web Site TRAC Reports Web Site FOIA Project Web Site
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Copyright 2017
TRAC What's New TRAC