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Meanwhile, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University published data this week showing how the number of cases before the immigration courts has now exceeded three million cases. That number has spiked from around 530,000 in December 2016 at the end of the Obama administration. At the end of the Trump administration, it stood at around 1.3 million. That was before the massive migrant crisis that hit the southern border in 2021. By the end of 2021, the backlog stood at 1.6 million and 2 million by the end of 2022. As of November of this year, the backlog is now at 3.075 million.
TRAC noted that the hiring of new immigration judges has accelerated under the Biden administration, with 682 judges now working and closing an average of 975 cases each during the latest fiscal year, but it has not been enough to keep up with the wave of migrants coming in.
"Immigration Judges are swamped. Immigration Judges now average 4,500 pending cases each," TRAC said in a report. "If every person with a pending immigration case were gathered together, it would be larger than the population of Chicago, the third largest city in the United States. Indeed, the number of waiting immigrants in the Court’s backlog is now larger than the population found in many states."
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