Buried Under 1.6 Million Cases, Lawmakers Consider Immigration Court Overhaul

The House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration heard testimony from immigration judges and leaders of national bar associations calling for reorganization of the country’s immigration court system that many said is strained by a historic backlog of nearly 1.6 million cases and political pressures, reports the Courthouse News Service.

The backlog is only getting worse, with 140,000 cases added just since October, 2021, and some, such as Mimi Tsankov, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, attributed some of it to the oversight of the immigration courts system by the Department of Justice.

Tsankov said this makes the country’s immigration court’s subject to political whims and can create whiplash for immigration cases when there’s a transition between administrations with different immigration priorities.

Meanwhile, other officials have expressed support for reorganization, pointing to the federal tax courts as a potential model for the new system and emphasizing the importance of insulating immigration courts from the DOJ and political influence and indicating a bill to reform the immigration courts may be in the future.

They also suggested that lawmakers, rather than making the entire system independent of the DOJ, consider creating an independent circuit court of appeals that would alleviate the caseload of the other immigration courts and create uniform rulings on appeals.

Additional Reading: Immigration Judges Leaving in Record Numbers