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To help reduce the backlog of 1.3 million pending immigration cases, the House Appropriations Committee has approved a funding bill for an additional 100 federal immigration judges.
The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies funding bill must be approved by the full House and Senate.
If approved, the overall budget for the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) — which oversees the nation’s immigration courts — would be set at $891 million in fiscal year 2022. That is an increase of $157.2 million from this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The increased funding would allow for the hiring of 100 new immigration judges as well as their staff, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from South Texas who sits on the Committee said Wednesday.
Graphic Source: TRAC
The need for more immigration judges is evident based on the growing case backlog compared with completed cases.
There were 126,911 new immigration cases added so far in fiscal 2021, nearly double the 68,260 cases that the courts managed to complete during this same time period, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonprofit that tracks all U.S. immigration cases, reports
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