Immigrant Daily

Illegal Immigrants Languish in Jails as Cases Pileup at Immigration Courts

The pendency of cases in U.S. immigration courts is fast becoming a matter of great concern. The cases are so clogged that 90,000 people accused of being in the U.S. illegally have waited almost for two years, for an immigration judge to decide whether they must leave. Among them were 14,000 immigrants whose cases were decided in more than five years and a few, whose cases took more than a decade. The review of immigration court cases completed between 2003 and mid-2008 was done by USA TODAY (a news blog) by using a copy of the court system’s docket obtained from the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).  The listing included only those cases, which have been resolved, and there is no information of how many more long-delayed cases might be pending. Five-year delays were most common in San Francisco, LOS Angeles and New York but were far less common around busy border crossings such as San Diego and Tucson.

Dana Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco, and President of the National Association of Immigration Judges, says, “Immigration courts are so backlogged that putting a case on a judge’s calendar can take more than a year.” “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.” According to her, in the most extreme cases, immigrants can remain locked up while their cases are delayed with the backlogs leaving them to struggling to exist until they learn their fate.

The Immigration Courts run by the Justice Department have been the subject of criticism that their 224 judges are unable to handle a flood of increasingly complicated cases. Justice Department Spokeswoman Susan Eastwood acknowledges some long delays; however, she attributes long delays in most of the cases to unusual circumstances. She also says that the federal law requires the courts to swiftly deal with cases including requests for asylum for immigrants who are jailed while their cases are being heard. According to Eastwood, the department has no guidelines as to how quickly the courts should handle other cases.

For further information, please click Immigration Courts Face Huge Backlog