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“President Trump has escalated the war of words about refugees and asylum seekers being national security threats,” Yale-Loehr said. “Anyone who’s applying for asylum, no matter what country they are from, has to be concerned that it’s going to be harder to win asylum now and that it may take longer than under the prior administration.”
The waiting period for asylum seekers to be seen before an immigration judge is two to three years due to the severe shortage of judges, Yale-Loehr added.
By the end of July 2016, the number of backlogged cases in the country was 617,527, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse — the highest number to date. Of these cases, New York had the third highest amount of any U.S. state: 84,429.
Upstate New York have a history of refugee acceptance, which may be why so many have ended up here. But we can do more when U.S. asylum seekers will often end up spending their time detained in federal detention facilities, awaiting trial.
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