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Federation for American Immigration Reform
August 2, 2016

Immigration Court Backlog Tops 500,000 Cases


The number of illegal aliens set to go before an immigration judge has nearly doubled since President Obama took office. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the backlog at the end of June hit an all-time high of 496,704 compared to the backlog of 223,809 immigration cases which were pending at the end of Fiscal Year 2009. (TRAC, June 2016) As of the end of last month, the backlog represented an average of 1,819 cases for each of the 273 judges now on the bench, or a workload that will take 2 ½ years to clear up — without any additional cases being filed. (Id.) The ramifications caused by the court backlog means that illegal aliens will wait for years before they have their hearing. Without a functioning court system, illegal aliens are not only likely to become entrenched in the United States but they are also likely to skip their hearing and disappear into the interior of this country.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
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