Clogged Courts: Immigration backlog may need reform

Jesus Aldana, a local resident, considers himself an American even though he’s a Resident Alien.

“I love my country,” he said.

Aldana was born in Mexico but he loves the U.S. Like millions of people, he had to go through the immigration system to live here – a system immigration attorney Iliana Holguin says is clogged. “We just don’t have enough immigration judges.”

There are 260 immigration judges around the country – by most accounts – not enough for the more than 407,000 pending cases.

“There’s a limit of visas that are available every single year in any given category and the problem is that those numbers haven’t changed in decades and many many many more people apply than there are visas available so a long waiting line and now the line is so long it’s nearly 20 years,” said Holguin.

For people trying to get their permanent residency through a U.S. citizen sibling, the line is long. There’s a cap of 65,000 visas a year in this category, far fewer than the number of people who apply. On average, it takes about two decades to get to the front of the line. In the meantime, many of them are in the U.S living illegally.

“A lot of those folks are the folks who end up being encountered in the U.S. and being placed in removal proceedings and they’re people who have a way to get their lawful permanent resident status and a lot of these cases are the same ones that are clogging up the immigration system,” said Holguin.

For Aldana, his stepfather, a U.S. citizen, filed for he and his mom to get their permanent residency when Aldana was a child. It generally takes less time for spouses of U.S. citizens to get their permanent residencies. But even for them, there was a new setback this year.

The nearly 60,000 Central American migrants who came to the U.S.- many unaccompanied children – are going to the front of the line of the immigration courts – worsening the chronic backlog. Because the migrants mostly didn’t cross through El Paso though, Holguin said it’s not affecting the six El Paso immigration courts. “Here in el paso we didn’t see that thankfully. but there were a lot of cities that were impacted by the influx, where the courts had to make changes to their regular docketing system.”

While the U.S. Border Patrol’s budget increased by 30% to $3.5 billion from 2009 to 2013, the immigration court system budget increased by 8% to $289 million in the same time frame. President Obama’s request this summer for $45 million, partly to hire more judges, was denied by Congress.

The Central American child migrants can avoid deportation and gain access to permanent residency if they can prove they were abused, neglected or abandoned by their guardians and will be harmed if they return to their home country. If they prove that in state court, then they can be legally separated from their parents and live with a relative in the U.S.