IJs Sent to Border Had Little to Do

Back in March, we noted that IJs were “border bound.” That is, IJs working in places like San Francisco and New York were temporarily taken off of their local dockets and transferred to facilities at the border in order to process cases there. 

New information indicates that reallocation of resources failed to accomplish much beyond increasing already-long delays for individuals in those courts that sent judges to the border.

Salon reports that visiting judges could not keep busy with a “nearly half empty” caseload. IJ Slavin, who sits in Baltimore, told Salon “I canceled about 100 cases in my home court to hear 20.”

WNBC, covering this same story, cited the DOJ’s own assessment that “six of the 17 immigration courts receiving transferred judges could not give those judges enough work to support a full docket.”

For the latest data on immigration court backlogs, TRAC is, as always, the best resource.

-KitJ