Veteran immigration attorneys and immigrant rights advocates are waiting to hear what President-elect Donald Trump’s plan will be to handle a backlog of immigration court cases.
According to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse maintained by Syracuse University, there are currently 3.7 million cases pending in immigration court.
“Before there’s any real serious impact, Congress would have to do what was in the Senate bipartisan bill, and that is a significant increase in funding for immigration judges and trial lawyers attorneys,” said Houston immigration attorney, Charles Foster.
Foster has worked with multiple presidential administrations on immigration reform. Foster said he won an award from the National Immigration Forum for his work on the bipartisan border that ultimately failed to pass Congress. Foster called for a steep increase in funding for new judges and attorneys.
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“It would have significantly increased funding not by 10% or 20%, but several hundred percent for immigration judges and trial attorneys, you need both,” said Foster.
Incoming Border Czar Tom Homan said plans for mass deportations would target those who’ve had their day in court and given an order of removal. The cases currently pending in immigration have not yet reached that stage.
Houston immigration attorney Raed Gonzalez worries that President Trump will follow in the footsteps of his first administration and remove “prosecutorial discretion” from the legal process. Prosecutorial discretion gives the federal government the ability to administratively close low-priority cases so that high-priority cases, such as those with criminal records or those deemed a national security threat, can be moved to the top of the docket.
“Those everybody wants out and they should be the definite priority, not some someone that doesn’t have any criminal conviction, pays taxes and does not represent any risk to the United States citizens,” said Gonzalez.
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Gonzalez worries getting rid of prosecutorial discretion would increase the length of time it takes for a case to move through the system.
According to TRAC data, it takes an average of 577 days for a case to work through the system. That length of time varies from court-to-court.
Neither Foster nor Gonzalez have heard of definitive plans by the incoming administration to handle the backlog or the wider issue of immigration reform.
Executive director of the immigrant rights organization, FIEL, Cesar Espinosa advocates for an overhaul of our asylum system.
TRAC data shows more than 1 million asylum claims are awaiting a hearing and decision.
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“I think this calls to the attention of why we would need a massive immigration overhaul to not keep redoing the systems that at the end of the day are not doing anything for anybody,” said Espinosa. “You have people here that are waiting four years, and then at the end of the day, they may have children here or they may have roots here, and then all of a sudden you deny their asylum claim, but they already have children who are U.S. citizens. So then that goes into another issue.”
