All states are witnessing an increase in Immigration Court backlogs. However, ten states account for the vast majority of the backlog. Four out of five pending cases in the country are before immigration judges in these ten states. The state of Maryland leads the pack with the highest rate of increase in pending cases since the beginning of FY 2017. Pending caseloads in Maryland have increased by 96 percent, roughly double its caseload at the beginning of FY 2017. Of the top ten states, courts based in Texas experienced the least amount of growth at 20 percent. See Figure 1.

In absolute terms, California has the largest Immigration Court backlog - 140,676 cases waiting decision, a number that has increased by 48 percent from its FY 2017 pending caseload level.

Courts based in three other states experienced even higher growth rates than in California. Massachusetts' court backlog grew by 76 percent. The backlog in Georgia grew by 67 percent, while pending cases in Florida grew by 57 percent.

To view further details on each of the top ten states go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/526/

In addition, many of TRAC's free query tools - which track the court's overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more - have now been updated through July 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC's immigration tools go to:

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

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