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Federal immigration courts are struggling to review the large backlog of cases that has reached an all-time high, with more than 445,000 pending cases, according to a new report.
As of April of this year, 445,706 immigration cases were still pending in courts across the United States – a nearly 30 percent increase from the prior fiscal year – and experts expect it to become even worse this year.
“There is no ability of the court to keep up,” Denise Gilman, director of an immigration clinic at the University of Texas law school in Austin, Texas, told the Los Angeles Times. “We really are in a vicious cycle.”
According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, the backlog of immigration cases has been years in the making, but courts became overwhelmed after the influx of more than 68,500 unaccompanied minors and families who crossed the southern border last summer.
During the so-called border surge, immigration courts gave priority to unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America, pushing back all other already pending cases. These cases make up a small portion of the back log – more than 70,000 cases, as of April, the report said.
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