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The U.S. Justice Department is demanding that federal immigration judges clear more cases as part of their annual performance review.
The judges will be required to process at least 700 cases a year, or three cases a day, in order to receive a "satisfactory" performance rating, according to new Justice Department guidelines.
On average, federal judges process 678 cases a year, according to a Justice Department official.
The new policy comes after the union representing nearly 330 immigration judges dropped its opposition to the inclusion of individual performance metrics, the official said.
"One of the metrics is the completion of 700 cases," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The new guidelines, which were sent to federal judges on Friday, go into effect October 1.
As of the end of February, there was a backlog of nearly 700,000 cases pending in U.S. immigration courts, according to data compiled by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
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