In addition, recent decisions by the Attorney General just implemented by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) have ballooned the backlog further. With a stroke of a pen, the court removed 330,211 previously completed cases and put them back on the "pending" rolls. These cases were previously administratively closed and had been considered part of the court's completed caseload.

When the pending backlog of cases now on the active docket is added to these newly created pending cases, the total climbs to a whopping 1,098,468 cases! This is more than double the number of cases pending at the beginning of FY 2017.

Assuming the court aims to schedule hearings eventually on all the newly defined "pending" cases, the backlog of over a million cases would take 5.1 years to work through at the current pace. This figure assumes that the court sets aside newly arriving cases and concentrates exclusively on the backlog.

To read the full report, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/536/

In addition, many of TRAC's free query tools - which track the court's active backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more - have now been updated through September 2018. 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

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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