Immigration Courts Swamped With Cases Taking 2-10 Years to Reach Disposition
The backlog of immigration cases is so dense that it took at least two years for 90,000 people accused of being in the U.S. illegally to get a judge to decide whether they needed to leave.
In a review of immigration cases since 2003, USA Today found 14,000 cases that took more than five years and some that took more than a decade to reach disposition. And getting calendared by one of the 224 immigration judges can take more than a year.
The immigration courts, the paper observes, are on the verge of being overwhelmed.
“You could have a case that would take an hour (to hear). But I can’t give you that hour of time for 14 months,” says Dana Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco and president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.
USA Today looked at immigration court cases between 2003 and mid-2008, using a copy of the court system’s docket obtained from the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. The information examined only included cases that have reached disposition.
Speeding up cases isn’t necessarily a solution.
“Do you want to be expedient or do you want to be just?” San Francisco attorney Jacquelyn Newman tells the paper.
Hat tip Criminal Justice Journalists.
