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When Trump took office, he inherited an immigration court system with a backlog of more than half a million pending cases, with proceedings often taking years to be completed. The situation has gotten worse since Trump took office: As of April, the backlog had grown to 585,930 cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. But the problem is nothing new: The lack of judges to oversee the rapid increase of immigration cases has been an issue for over a decade. According to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, there are currently 318 immigration judges serving nationwide out of the 374 positions authorized by Congress. In March, Trump requested an increase of nearly $80 million in his budget for the Department of Justice to hire 75 additional immigration judge teams. However, last year Human Rights First, a nonprofit advocacy organization, estimated that the court needs 524 judges to work through the backlog of cases.
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