The biggest immigration court backlog is currently in California, but other states are facing a more rapid growth of pending cases, a new report reveals. The average waiting period for hearings is also on the rise, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which analyzes data from immigration courts.
The majority of people involved with the system, regardless of their political views, agree that there has been a dearth of immigration judges for the number of cases for some years, and the backlog continues to grow despite new judges being hired by the Trump administration. The backlog across the US increased to 746,049 cases at the end of July 2018, TRAC said.
Around 80% of the cases occur in ten states; California, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, despite immigration courts existing in 31 states and territories. The biggest backlog of cases is 140,676 in California as of 31 July 2018, with the fastest growing backlog of 33,384 belonging to Maryland, almost twice the number the state had at the start of the 2017 fiscal year.
The backlog in California increased by around 48% during the same period, with the start of the 2017 fiscal year recording 95,252 pending cases in the state. Florida, Georgia, and Massachusetts are also experiencing faster growth of backlogs than California.