Dallas Immigration Detainees has Second-Longest Waiting Time
July 14, 2009 – 9:45 am
Alarming information was revealed by a new national study that shows the backlog of cases in Dallas’ immigration court has reached its highest point in a decade, resulting in the second-longest waiting times in Texas after San Antonio in Houston that has the longest waiting time in U.S. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan group at Syracuse University that analyzes federal efficiency found 2,633 cases pending in Dallas at the end of April this year. There are many reasons for these backlogs including the fact that the number of immigration cases handled by the administrative judges in Dallas has climbed more than 50 percent since FY 1999. Above all, nationally the number of cases jumped after the Bush administration hired thousands of new immigration agents and stepped up raids in factories and communities. Last year, immigration courts received 351,477 cases, also a record for the last decade. Many are infuriated with the administration’s callous attitude and are venting their anger, as Dana Marks, an immigration judges in San Francisco and president of the National Association of Immigration Judges said, “They aren’t even able to get the money to hire judges to keep up with attrition.” She adds, “We’re conducting the equivalent of death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.”
For complete information, please click Dallas Immigration Court’s Backlog Hits 10-Year High
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