TRAC: IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG CONTINUES TO MUSHROOM TO NEARLY 660,000 CASES WITH NO END IN SIGHT!

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Greetings. During the first two months of FY 2018, the Immigration Court number of pending cases climbed by an additional 30,000. According to the latest case-by-case court records, the backlog at the end of November 2017 had reached 658,728, up from 629,051 at the end of September 2017. Despite the hiring of many additional immigration judges, there has been no apparent slackening in the growth of this backlog. The rate of growth during the first two months of FY 2018 was in fact greater than the pace of growth during FY 2017.

California leads the country with the largest Immigration Court backlog of 123,217 cases. Texas is second with 103,384 pending cases as of the end of November 2017, followed by New York with 89,489 cases.

These and other findings are based upon very current case-by-case court records that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. For further highlights see:

http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/apprep_backlog.php

And for full details, go to TRAC’s online backlog tool at:

http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through November 2017. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (http://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (http://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to http://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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Of personal interest to me, the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia now has a pending caseload approaching 40,000 cases! Yet, amazingly, the “powers that be” apparently are still detailing Arlington immigration Judges to other dockets! Talk about ADR in action! No wonder cases are being set for Individual Hearing dates 4-5 years in the future!

PWS

01-04-18