'Unreal' backlog of immigration cases crowds dockets
By Susan Carroll | November 1, 2012 | Updated: November 1, 2012 11:49pm
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The volume of cases pending in Houston's overburdened immigration courts has swelled by more than 160 percent over the past three years, new data shows, leading to long delays for immigrants and crowded court dockets for judges.
"It's absolutely ridiculous what we're seeing right now," said Raed Gonzalez, a Houston immigration attorney who said local cases are now being scheduled for hearings in late 2014. "It's exhausting the judges. They're being overworked. It's unreal."
Houston's immigration court case load jumped from 4,723 in 2009 to 12,280 through the end of September - an increase of 160 percent, according to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and research organization at Syracuse University. Wait times also increased to an average of 453 days locally, up from 298 in 2009.
The national backlog also swelled to a high of 325,044 by Sept. 30, despite recent efforts by Department of Homeland Security officials to cull from court dockets cases involving illegal immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years without committing crimes, the data show.
The recent Syracuse data highlights persistent problems dogging the nation's immigration court system, which critics say has suffered from chronic understaffing and processing delays.
On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general issued a critical report based on analysis of national immigration caseloads over a five-year period, as well as specific deportation cases in eight sample states that included Texas, California, Washington and New York.
The report outlined a wide range of problems in the Executive Office of Immigration Review's administration of the system, charging that flaws in the system led to undue delays for immigrants, some of whom languished in detention. Officials at the immigration review office also routinely overstated accomplishments in performance reports and failed to adequately track judge workloads, the inspector general report found.
Ali Noorani with the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant rights group, seized on the report to call on Congress and the Obama administration to "focus on delivering justice in the immigration courts."
"Otherwise, immigrants languish in detention, awaiting a hearing, while costs to the government mount," Noorani said.
Juan Osuna, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, said in a statement that criticism of the agency's performance reporting is well taken and that he intends to review the inspector general's recommendations. But he wrote that the agency disagreed with conclusions that case completions were overstated.
Simplistic conclusions?
In his report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz said immigration court documents and performance reports were so inaccurate that it was difficult to determine causes for delays in deportation procedures.
The report was based on 1,785 immigration removal cases in 2009.
Of those cases, 53 percent, or 953 cases, had one or more continuances, with an average of four continuances of up to 3 months each - resulting in over a year of delay.
The average case for non-detained immigrants took 17½ months, "with some cases taking more than five years to complete," the report said.
But Laura Lichter, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the inspector general reached simplistic conclusions to complex problems associated with the immigration court system.
She said cases involving detained immigrants are less likely to involve an immigration lawyer. And in some cases, people could be "stuck in jail on a non-criminal matter" because they cannot afford a bond while their case moves through the system.
9 recommendations
Nine recommendations were made by the Justice Department inspector general to help the Executive Office for Immigration Review streamline the process.
Those recommendations include developing guidelines for judges to grant continuances, tracking cases to better allocate resources, improve collection of data and distinguishing deportation decisions from other judicial activities to better reflect completion goals when more than one court is involved
"It's absolutely ridiculous what we're seeing right now," said Raed Gonzalez, a Houston immigration attorney who said local cases are now being scheduled for hearings in late 2014. "It's exhausting the judges. They're being overworked. It's unreal."
Houston's immigration court case load jumped from 4,723 in 2009 to 12,280 through the end of September - an increase of 160 percent, according to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and research organization at Syracuse University. Wait times also increased to an average of 453 days locally, up from 298 in 2009.
The national backlog also swelled to a high of 325,044 by Sept. 30, despite recent efforts by Department of Homeland Security officials to cull from court dockets cases involving illegal immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years without committing crimes, the data show.
The recent Syracuse data highlights persistent problems dogging the nation's immigration court system, which critics say has suffered from chronic understaffing and processing delays.
On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general issued a critical report based on analysis of national immigration caseloads over a five-year period, as well as specific deportation cases in eight sample states that included Texas, California, Washington and New York.
The report outlined a wide range of problems in the Executive Office of Immigration Review's administration of the system, charging that flaws in the system led to undue delays for immigrants, some of whom languished in detention. Officials at the immigration review office also routinely overstated accomplishments in performance reports and failed to adequately track judge workloads, the inspector general report found.
Ali Noorani with the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant rights group, seized on the report to call on Congress and the Obama administration to "focus on delivering justice in the immigration courts."
"Otherwise, immigrants languish in detention, awaiting a hearing, while costs to the government mount," Noorani said.
Juan Osuna, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, said in a statement that criticism of the agency's performance reporting is well taken and that he intends to review the inspector general's recommendations. But he wrote that the agency disagreed with conclusions that case completions were overstated.
Simplistic conclusions?
In his report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz said immigration court documents and performance reports were so inaccurate that it was difficult to determine causes for delays in deportation procedures.
The report was based on 1,785 immigration removal cases in 2009.
Of those cases, 53 percent, or 953 cases, had one or more continuances, with an average of four continuances of up to 3 months each - resulting in over a year of delay.
The average case for non-detained immigrants took 17½ months, "with some cases taking more than five years to complete," the report said.
But Laura Lichter, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the inspector general reached simplistic conclusions to complex problems associated with the immigration court system.
She said cases involving detained immigrants are less likely to involve an immigration lawyer. And in some cases, people could be "stuck in jail on a non-criminal matter" because they cannot afford a bond while their case moves through the system.
9 recommendations
Nine recommendations were made by the Justice Department inspector general to help the Executive Office for Immigration Review streamline the process.
Those recommendations include developing guidelines for judges to grant continuances, tracking cases to better allocate resources, improve collection of data and distinguishing deportation decisions from other judicial activities to better reflect completion goals when more than one court is involved
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