The number of immigration cases waiting to be decided in federal court has increased at a faster rate under the Biden administration than under any other president, according to a report published Tuesday by a nonpartisan research organization.
Nearly 1.6 million people have cases pending in the U.S. immigration court system, the most ever recorded in history, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an affiliate of Syracuse University in New York.
The dramatic increase means illegal immigrants will wait years before having their claims decided, and that is expected to grow worse as the southern border crisis intensifies.
Of the total number of backlogged cases, 305,427 cases were added to the docket since March 2021, when the number of noncitizens illegally crossing the southern border from Mexico surged to the highest levels ever seen. The onslaught of cases has buried the fewer than 500 immigration judges nationwide in an “avalanche.”
“If every person with a pending immigration case were gathered together, it would be larger than the population of Philadelphia, the sixth-largest city in the United States,” Austin Kocher, assistant research professor at TRAC, said in a statement.
TEXAS SYNAGOGUE TERRORIST LIKELY DIDN’T REQUIRE VISA TO ENTER U.S., AVOIDING VETTING
The number of cases before the court is eight times the 200,000 counted in 2009 at the start of the Obama administration. By the time former President Donald Trump took office in early 2017, more than 572,000 cases were pending. In December 2020, shortly before Trump departed, nearly 1.3 million cases were waiting to be heard.
TRAC tracks cases on a quarterly basis. The biggest increase under any of the past four administrations took place from September through December 2021, when 138,578 cases were added, far beyond the previous record of 99,795 from June through September 2021. Prior to Biden taking office, the record stood at 88,847 in June 2020 under the Trump administration.
“These findings suggest that the immigration courts are entering a worrying new era of even more crushing caseloads — all the more concerning since no attempt at a solution has yet been able to reverse the avalanche of cases that immigration judges now face,” Kocher said.
The delays in resolving cases quickly is due to a number of factors, including the closing of immigration courts amid the coronavirus pandemic. An average of 40,000 cases were resolved in an average month leading up to March 2020. During the court’s closure, completed cases plummeted to around 6,000. At present, cases can take five years to be completed.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Immigration judges hear a variety of cases, but the majority involve noncitizens who have illegally crossed the border and are seeking asylum or face legal proceedings for coming into the country unlawfully. Each month since March 2021, between 150,000 and 210,000 people have been encountered illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for a total of 1.6 million in fiscal year 2021, which ended in September.
Of the 1.6 million known illegal crossings at the southern border, approximately 600,000 people were released into the United States, some without being placed into court proceedings but rather being told to self-report to immigration authorities to be added to the pending cases.
