Thread: Agency targets immigration backlog

Agency targets immigration backlog

11 hours ago • Mcclatchy Newspapers Mcclatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Government officials have adopted a series of recommendations to streamline federal immigration courts, where a record-high number of backlogged cases has brought the "fairness and effectiveness" of the courts into question.

Changes proposed by the Administrative Conference of the United States are aimed at easing the more than 300,000 pending cases in the courts, where it can take an average of 519 days from introduction to a judge's decision.

"That's almost a year and a half when you're just waiting for your case to be heard," said Funmi Olorunnipa, an attorney adviser at the conference, an independent federal agency that provides nonpartisan legal advice and expertise to government agencies.

The conference worked with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security for more than a year, looking for ways to make immigration courts more "timely, efficient and fair."

The recommendations ranged from finding more efficient ways for short-handed judges to use their time to doing a better job of informing detainees of their rights in court and letting judges sanction poorly performing attorneys - a power they do not now have.

"Judges sometimes feel like a school master without the ability to suspend or grade a student," said Lenni Benson, a New York Law School professor and one of two outside consultants who worked on the report. "They see bad behavior and are powerless to do anything."

The 37 recommendations were vetted by a selection of federal officials, administrative law experts and private-sector individuals at an ACUS meeting this month. After they are published in the Federal Register, Olorunnipa said, the conference will work with the affected agencies to implement them. Most of the proposals were aimed at Justice's Executive Office of Immigration Review, which was created in 1983 to decide whether foreign-born individuals charged with violating immigration law should be removed from the U.S. or permitted to stay here.

TAKE A NUMBER

Immigration courts around the country with the most pending cases in fiscal 2012:

1. California 74,948

2. New York 46,380

3. Texas 34,827

4. Illinois 17,384

5. Florida 16,943

6. Arizona 13,234

7. New Jersey 10,807

8. Massachusetts 9,268

9. Virginia 8,763

10. Colorado 7,757

In Arizona

Phoenix 10,563

Tucson 1,283

Eloy 812

Florence 576

Source: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Agency targets immigration backlog

Had the border been closed as promised in 1986, there wouldn't be a big backlog.