Immigration Court Completions Remain at Historic Lows Through July 2020

Last year, it was reported that the backlog of immigration cases had hit one million.

TRAC Immigration’s analysis of the latest data shows that the partial shutdown of the immigration courts in the wake of COVID-19 has impacted hundreds of thousands of immigrants awaiting their day in court. “For the Court’s current active backlog of 1,233,307 immigrants waiting for their cases to be heard, canceled hearings due to COVID-19 are increasing hearing delays for months and often years to come.”

Monthly case completions before the March shutdown were running over 40,000. During January 2020, for example, they were 42,045 and in February completions were 41,793. During the period from April to July they fell precipitously to around 6,000. In July 2020, only 5,960 cases were completed.

KJ