Immigration Courts Deciding More Cases, But Backlog Growing

The Immigration Court has steadily increased the number of cases it has completed. According to the latest court data updated through the end of January 2017 and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, case completions during the first four months of FY 2017 are above the comparable period from last year. If this pace continues, this will mark the third year in a row that has seen an increase, and will represent a 17 percent rise since FY 2014. Removal orders after seeing little increase in their numbers since FY 2014, are up so far this year.

Unfortunately, this growth in case completions has been insufficient to stem the growing backlog of cases still waiting for resolution before the Immigration Court. At the end of January 2017, the court’s backlog had increased to a record 542,411. Even if no additional cases were filed, the backlog now represents over a two and a half year workload for the court’s judges, based upon its current capacity to handle the matters before it.

For more details, including the top ten states with the largest number of removal orders issued so far this FY, see this month’s snapshot report here.  Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, and New York at the top five states in terms of removals.

KJ