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What we see is, once [President Joe Biden] came in, he changed the policies, he gave the immigration court more authority to run their shop," TRAC co-director Sue Long told Law360 on Monday. "What we see is an increase here.
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The immigration courts have closed a record 375,000 cases over the first 11 months of the fiscal year as court policies enacted by the Biden administration caseload begin to take hold, according to a Syracuse University report.
Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse reported Friday that the increased number of immigration judges and the return of certain case management tools have contributed to the immigration courts' "accelerating" push to close out cases and reduce the 1.9 million-case backlog that has clogged up court dockets and left noncitizens waiting years for their day in court.
"What we see is, once [President Joe Biden] came in, he changed the policies, he gave the immigration court more authority to run their shop," TRAC co-director Sue Long told Law360 on Monday. "What we see is an increase here."
The number of cases hitting the immigration courts has been climbing since the Bush administration and succeeding administrations have struggled to manage the backlogs. During Biden's presidency, the executive branch has pushed to hire more immigration judges, restored their authority to pause lower-priority cases and encouraged them, in a June 2021 directive, to use all available tools to ensure the "timely" resolution of cases.
Though the full effects of Biden's efforts have yet to be seen, TRAC reported that the judges have already closed roughly 50% more immigration cases in fiscal year 2022 than in fiscal year 2019, when the Trump administration set the previous case closure record. If the courts continue their pace, they will close more than 400,000 cases when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, TRAC said.
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