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The New Orleans immigration courts have none of that bustle. Over five days during a two-week period in June that officials described as typical this year, two active courtrooms heard about 50 combined cases each morning, wrapping up business by 11 a.m. even though all those cases were continued.
The brief activity seemed puzzling for a system that all sides of the immigration debate agree has been overwhelmed by a growing national backlog of at least 1.8 million cases. For the New Orleans courts, the backlog currently stands at more than 40,000 cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, at Syracuse University, which focuses on immigration topics. But the darkly wooded courtrooms — featuring the Department of Justice seal on to the wall behind the judge (photography not allowed) — feel more like a sleepy municipal outpost than one of the key cogs in a national crisis.
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