18 Dec 2023
Immigration Court Backlog Tops 3 Million; Each Judge Assigned 4,500 Cases
"A new record was reached in November. The Immigration Court backlog passed 3 million pending cases. Just 12 months ago, during November 2022, the backlog was 2 million. That means the case backlog has grown by a million cases in just the past 12 months. Immigration Judges are swamped. Immigration Judges now average 4,500 pending cases each. If every person with a pending immigration case were gathered together, it would be larger than the population of Chicago, the third largest city in the United States. Indeed, the number of waiting immigrants in the Court’s backlog is now larger than the population found in many states. Previous administrations — all the way back through at least the George W. Bush administration — have failed when they tried to tackle the seemingly intractable problem of the Immigration Court "backlog." Recently, however, the accelerating growth in the Court’s backlog has transformed the problem into an even more daunting challenge. ... "
