Growth in the Immigration Court Backlog Continues in FY 2019

The Immigration Court backlog continues to rise. As of November 30, 2018, the number of pending cases on the court's active docket topped eight-hundred thousand (809,041) cases. This is almost a fifty percent (49.1%) increase compared to the 542,411 cases pending at the end of January 2017 when President Trump took office. This figure does not include the additional 330,211 previously completed cases that EOIR placed back on the "pending" rolls that have not yet been put onto the active docket[1].

Table 1. Growth in the Immigration Court Backlog by State
Rank State* Beginning of
FY 2017
End of
November 2018
Percent Increase
1 Maryland 17,074 35,300 107%
2 Georgia 13,955 26,447 90%
3 Florida 32,233 60,793 89%
4 Massachusetts 15,208 28,490 87%
5 New Jersey 27,457 44,096 61%
6 New York 70,303 108,458 54%
6 California 95,252 146,826 54%
8 Virginia 29,467 44,154 50%
9 Texas 91,865 119,401 30%
10 Illinois 23,242 29,922 29%
* Top ten states with largest current court case backlog.

All states are witnessing an increase in Immigration Court backlogs[2]. 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 continues to lead the pack with the highest rate of increase in pending cases since the beginning of FY 2017. Pending caseloads in Maryland have increased by 107 percent, over double its caseload at the beginning of FY 2017. Of the top ten states, courts based in Illinois experienced the least amount of growth at 29 percent. Texas barely missed being in the bottom growth rate spot with a 30 percent increase. See Table 1.

In absolute terms, California has the largest Immigration Court backlog - 146,826 cases waiting decision, a number that has increased by 54 percent from its FY 2017 pending caseload level. These results are based upon proceeding-by-proceeding internal Immigration Court records obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University

Backlog Increases in the First Two Months of FY 2019

Just in the last two months, the Immigration Court active backlog has grown by over 40 thousand cases, from 768,257 at the end of September to 809,041 at the end of November. Particularly high growth rates of 10 percent or higher were experienced at nine Immigration Courts.


Figure 1. Growth in the Immigration Court Backlog in First Two Months of FY 2019
(Click for larger image)

The two courts with the highest rate of growth in their backlog were two courts at ICE detention facilities. The Eloy Immigration Court in Arizona saw its backlog increase by 144 percent, while the Conroe Immigration Court (Houston SPC) in Texas had an increase of 62 percent. These increases occurred even though the court assigns the highest priority to hearing detained cases. See Figure 1 and Table 2.

Table 2. Growth in the Immigration Court Backlog in First Two Months of FY 2019 by Court
Rank Immigration Court* End of September 2018 End of November 2018 Change Percent Change
1 Miami 37,620 42,154 4,534 12.1%
2 New York 100,837 105,100 4,263 4.2%
3 Houston 50,542 53,575 3,033 6.0%
4 Orlando 15,118 17,792 2,674 17.7%
5 Los Angeles 73,988 76,279 2,291 3.1%
6 San Francisco 58,579 60,677 2,098 3.6%
7 Memphis 13,348 14,795 1,447 10.8%
8 Newark 41,909 43,341 1,432 3.4%
9 Philadelphia 14,247 15,509 1,262 8.9%
10 New Orleans 10,622 11,810 1,188 11.2%
11 Atlanta 24,515 25,680 1,165 4.8%
12 Baltimore 34,240 35,300 1,060 3.1%
13 Boston 27,579 28,490 911 3.3%
14 Dallas 24,859 25,750 891 3.6%
15 Phoenix 8,311 9,129 818 9.8%
16 Chicago 29,109 29,922 813 2.8%
17 Kansas City 8,272 9,058 786 9.5%
18 Conroe (Houston SPC) 1,250 2,023 773 61.8%
19 Eloy 524 1,281 757 144.5%
20 San Antonio 26,337 27,036 699 2.7%
21 Arlington 43,567 44,153 586 1.3%
22 Bloomington 8,015 8,547 532 6.6%
23 Las Vegas 4,190 4,691 501 12.0%
24 Seattle 10,502 10,983 481 4.6%
25 Cleveland 9,866 10,343 477 4.8%
* These 25 courts handle 88 percent of the current backlog.

Footnotes

[1] See TRAC's November 2018 report for more details on the court's move to place cases that had been administratively closed back on the "pending" caseload list.

[2] See earlier TRAC report with similar state-by-state backlog comparisons as of the end of July 2018.

TRAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center affiliated with the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Whitman School of Management, both at Syracuse University. For more information, to subscribe, or to donate, contact trac@syr.edu or call 315-443-3563.