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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Despite the concern about the number of families arriving at the border seeking asylum, families continue to remain a minor proportion of new cases arriving at the Immigration Courts each month. For example, during March 2019, just 18.7 percent of the new cases that came in involved these families. Despite this, the court’s backlog continues to climb and reached a new historic high of 869,013 cases on its active docket at the end of March.
After being released in border communities, families seldom remain there. Since September 2018, 32 courts in 24 states have received at least 100 new family cases. Over half of these cases are before courts headquartered in sanctuary cities. Among the top ten courts where family cases are located, six are usually classified as sanctuary jurisdictions. These courts include those in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.
These results are based upon the latest court records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. These data were obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Full data on what happens to families after they are arrested at the border, however, are not available. The Justice Department has now stopped providing TRAC with information needed to track the processing of asylum and related applications for relief. Information both on historical as well as new asylum applications are now being withheld during this review.
In addition, the government admits it lacks the ability to reliably follow cases when they are transferred from one agency to another. Without this information, agency officials are unable to effectively manage the situation. This appears to parallel the difficulties the government has had in reuniting children separated from their parents because separate record systems didn’t pass along relevant information.
For the full report, go to:
https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/556/
In addition, a number 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 March 2019. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:
https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/
If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:
https://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
trac@syr.edu
https://trac.syr.edu———————————————————————————
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://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 https://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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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), the DHS “Advisory Committee,” and other Trump Apologists to the contrary, neither arriving families nor the current asylum law are the problems (except that the Administration fails to apply the current asylum law and procedures fairly). No, the problem is the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump kakistocracy in the White House, at DHS, and in the DOJ.
Democrats must take care not to be “stampeded” by Trump’s bogus White Nationalist narrative (even parroted by some members of the “mainstream press”) into changing asylum laws to further screw asylum seekers. Rather they need to stand firm on insisting that the Trump Administration follow existing laws on asylum, protection of unaccompanied minors, and other forms of humanitarian protection.
There isn’t going to be a “grand bargain’ on immigration until the Trump kakistocracy and its enablers are removed from power. And “border security” does not require a reduction or truncation of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers as a “trade-off” for legalization programs.
Actually, clearing intentionally and maliciously overcrowded Immigration Court dockets of cases of individuals whose removal actually hurts the U.S. and figuring out a way of getting more of these folks we need into the legal immigration system right off the bat (instead of forcing them into the “immigration black market”) are essential parts of any border security program.
What real border security does require is a competent focus on making the asylum adjudication system and the Immigration Court system function in accordance with protection laws, Due Process, and fundamental fairness. A fair, timely, and efficient Immigration Court system serves everyone’s needs, including DHS enforcement.
Fair, impartial, and independent judges who are not controlled by politicos with a White Nationalist agenda would be the basic starting point. It also includes a fair application of the law to include gender based persecution and persecution by gangs and other entities exercising quasi-governmental authority in “failed states.” Indeed, if any “clarifications” are made in asylum law it should be to specifically write these interpretations into the refugee definition as was done by a bipartisan group of legislators in the past who were dissatisfied with the administrative failure to include victims of persecution in the form of coercive family planning in the refugee definition.
PWS
04-21-19