Report: Immigration Judge Shortage Causing Huge Case Backlog

A “severe” shortage of immigration judges is causing a yearslong case backlog that is likely to get much worse as Title 42’s end sees a massive surge of illegal migrants coming across the border.

The New York Times reported Friday that the expected huge surge in illegal immigration resulting from Title 42 ending late Thursday is now focusing attention on the lack of immigration judges to hear asylum cases causing a 2 million case backlog.

“This is a great tragedy because it creates a second class of citizens,” Eliza C. Klein, who left her position as an immigration judge in April, told the Times. “It’s a disgrace. My perspective, my thought, is that we’re not committed in this country to having a just system.”

Klein said she began working as an immigration judge under the administration of former President Bill Clinton and one of her oldest cases still pending in the courts is 35 years old, starting when she did on the bench.

She told the Times that she is concerned the expected huge increase in illegal immigration that the end of Title 42 is expected to bring will further strain the “understaffed” immigration court workforce of about 650, forcing them to concentrate on the new flood of illegal immigrants while leaving older cases languishing on the backburner.

The Times reported that data collected by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearing House, which tracks the average time for an immigration case to be heard in court, estimates that timeframe to already be around four years to close a case as the backlog has increased from an estimated 1 million in 2019 to more than double that now.

Judges told the news outlet that they are presiding over cases that have been pending for more than 10 years.

“The immigration courts are failing,” Samuel B. Cole, the judge association’s executive vice president told the publication. “There needs to be broad systemic change.”

According to the report, President Joe Biden’s administration asked for $1.5 billion in its 2023 budget request to address the backlog by hiring 200 more judges, but Congress approved half of that resulting in a total of 734 positions that the administration is still trying to fill.

“I don’t think the United States has ever treated the adjudication for any immigration benefit as a priority for its immigration policy,” Cristobal Ramón, an immigration consultant who has written for the Migration Policy Institute and the George W. Bush Institute, said in the report.