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Nearly 1.6 million asylum applications are pending in US immigration courts and at US Citizenship and Immigration Services – the largest number of pending asylum cases on record, according to analysis of federal data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
US immigration courts have seen an over seven-fold increase in asylum cases from fiscal year 2012, when there were 100,000 cases pending, and the end of fiscal year 2022, when the backlog grew to over 750,000, per the clearinghouse.
“Since then, in just the first two months of [fiscal year] 2023 (October – November 2022), the asylum backlog jumped by over 30,000 new cases and now totals, 787,882,” the clearinghouse stated.
The Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition is a migrant respite center in Del Rio, Texas. So far this year, more than 32,000 migrants have come through the center, a nearly 40% increase over last year's total, according to Tiffany Burrow, the center's director of operations.
Migrants from three countries are driving the spike in encounters at the southern border, swamping a backlogged immigration system
The asylum seekers are from 219 different countries and speak 418 different languages, according to the Syracuse group. About 3 out of 10 are children under the age of 18 and the leading countries of origin include Guatemala, Venezuelan, Cuba and Brazil, the group said. Florida and Massachusetts are among the states with the biggest asylum case growth.
The overall average wait time for an asylum hearing is about 4.3 years, but in Omaha, Nebraska – the court with the longest delay – the wait time averages 5.9 years, according to the group.
A growing number of asylum seekers are being electronically monitored through the Department of Homeland Security’s Alternative to Detention program, while a small portion – about 2,000 – are in ICE detention, according to the clearinghouse.
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