 |
|
The public’s focus on decrying fraud overshadows other growing cracks within the asylum system. While money has poured into immigration enforcement, spending on adjudication hasn’t kept pace, causing backlogs in most cases that can last many months or years. As of January, about 360,000 immigration court cases were pending for an average of 573 days, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Meanwhile, applicants are separated from loved ones who may still be in danger from their governments.
Immigration officers and judges, faced with this backlog, are forced to make life-or-death decisions under tight time pressures. As Dana L. Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco, once said, it’s “like doing death-penalty cases in a traffic-court setting.” Only Congress can address this staffing crisis.
|
|
|
|
