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Immigration Courts Backlog
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Immigration Court Backlog: Time to Complete a Deportation Hearing Increased by 700%
June 14, 2017 – Experts are blaming the U.S. Supreme Court, Obama-era policies, a surge in illegal immigrant children, a hiring freeze on judges and an uptick in asylum requests for a doubling in the backlog of cases pending at immigration courts in the U.S.
See also:The backlog is so great, some courts are scheduling cases years into the future, according to a report this month by the government’s General Accounting Office (GAO). Findings by the report included:
--a more than doubling in the number of backlogged cases from 212,000 in fiscal year 2006 and to 437,000 in fiscal year 2015;
--a 25 percent decline in the number of cases ending in deportation during the same period, from 77 percent of completed cases in 2006 to 52 percent in 2015;
--a 700 percent increase in the time judges take to compete a deportation proceeding, from 42 days in 2006 to 336 days in 2015.
The report also found that while the number of immigration judges increased during the period covered, the number of cases completed declined annually – “which resulted in a lower number of case completions per immigration judge at the end of the 10-year period.” Finally, the report said that the time it took to complete an immigration case shot up “more than fivefold” during the period studied. “Immigration judges, court administrators, DHS attorneys, experts and stakeholders told us that a lack of court personnel, such as immigration judges, legal clerks, and other support staff, was a contributing factor to the case backlog,” the report said. “Further, some of these experts and stakeholders told us that EOIR (Executive Office for Immigration Review) did not have sufficient funding to appropriately staff the immigration courts.” “The current backlog is unacceptable,” a Department of Justice spokesman told CNSNews.com.
The immigration court system, he said in an email, “is actively engaged in a multi-front effort to reverse the backlog’s growth that occurred over the past several years.” The spokesman noted that the system is hiring more judges, and “reviewing internal practices, procedures, and technology in order to identify ways in which it can enhance immigration judge productivity without compromising due process.” Jean King, general counsel for the EOIR, blamed decisions by the Supreme Court and appeals courts for the immigration courts’ slowdown and backlog. “Immigration cases have become significantly more complex due to Supreme Court decisions and hundreds of decisions by the United States Courts of Appeals, contributing to an increasingly intricate legal landscape in the immigration system,” King said in a letter to the GAO last month. She also blamed the slowdown and backlog on an uptick in immigrants requesting asylum, more cases involving detained aliens, and a three-year hiring freeze on judges during the time the report was compiled.
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U.S. arrests nearly 200 Iraqis in deportation sweep
Wed Jun 14, 2017 | U.S. immigration authorities have arrested and moved to deport 199 Iraqi immigrants, mostly from the Detroit area, in the last three weeks after Iraq agreed to accept deportees as part of a deal removing it from President Donald Trump's travel ban, officials said on Wednesday.
In the Detroit area, 114 Iraqi nationals were arrested over the weekend, and 85 throughout the rest of the country over the past several weeks, Gillian Christensen, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman, said in a statement. The actions came as part of the Trump administration's push to increase immigration enforcement and make countries, which have resisted in the past, take back nationals ordered deported from the United States. The crackdown on Iraqi immigrants followed the U.S. government's decision to drop Iraq from a list of Muslim-majority nations targeted by a revised version of Trump's temporary travel ban issued in March. The overwhelming majority of those arrested had criminal convictions for crimes including murder, rape, assault, kidnapping, burglary, drug trafficking, weapons violations and other offenses, Christensen said.
As of April 17, 2017, there were 1,444 Iraqi nationals with final orders for removal, she said. Since the March 12 agreement with Iraq regarding deportees, eight Iraqi nationals have been removed to Iraq. Dozens of Iraqi Chaldean Catholics in Detroit were among those targeted in the immigration sweeps, some of whom fear they will be killed if deported to their home country, immigration attorneys and family members said. “It is very worrisome that ICE has signaled its intention to remove Chaldean Christians to Iraq where their safety not only cannot be guaranteed, but where they face persecution and death for their religious beliefs,” Martin Manna, president of the Chaldean Community Foundation, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Kurdish Iraqis also were picked up in Nashville, Tennessee, attorneys, activists and family members said. At least some of those arrested came to the United States as children, got in trouble and already served their sentences, according to immigration attorneys and activists. Some have lived in the United States so long they no longer speak Arabic. An Iraqi official previously said Iraqi diplomatic and consular missions would coordinate with U.S. authorities to issue travel documents for the deportees.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN19537S
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