Immigration Caseload in Federal Courts

Jennifer Talhelm, of the Associated Press, writes about the serious caseload problem facing federal courts:

“Immigration-related felony cases are swamping federal courts along the Southwest border, forcing judges to handle hundreds more cases than their peers elsewhere.

“Judges in the five, mostly rural judicial districts on the border carry the heaviest felony caseloads in the nation. Each judge in New Mexico, which ranked first, handled an average of 397 felony cases last year, compared with the national average of 84.

“Federal judges in those five districts – Southern and Western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California – handled one-third of all the felonies prosecuted in the nation’s 94 federal judicial districts in 2005, according to federal court statistics.” Click here for the rest of the story.

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