According to a report just published by the Transactional Records
Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonpartisan group that conducts analysis
on the performance of the federal government, U.S. immigration courts
are facing major slowdowns. According to TRAC, even though the Justice
Department three years ago reported that U.S. immigration courts were
severely overburdened and called for the hiring of 40 new judges, only
a few judges have been hired and the reported backlog of immigration
cases has hit the highest level this decade. TRAC reports that the lack
of necessary judges has led to a 19 percent increase in case backlog
since 2006 and a 23 percent increase in the time it takes to resolve
cases.
In mid-April the Justice Department noted that there were 234
immigration judges practicing in the U.S., an increase of only 4 judges
since two years prior. At the same time, the number of immigration
cases received by U.S. courts peaked to exorbitant numbers; last year,
more than 350,000 cases were received, due in large part to the Bush
Administration’s crackdown on factories and immigrant communities in
the Midwest and Southwest regions of the country.
Charles Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, recently
commented that the Justice Department intends to hire 19 new
immigration judges. By 2010, they plan to have hired 28 more judges and
28 clerks.
