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TRAC Immigration
Ballooning Wait Times for Hearing Dates
in Overworked Immigration Courts
There were nearly a half million individual deportation cases (456,644) pending before the judges in the nation's clearly overwhelmed Immigration Courts at the end of August, according to the very latest information obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This backlog has been rising steadily for nearly a decade and has reached yet another new all-time high.
As a result, the average wait time for an individual in the Immigration Court's pending cases list has also reached an all-time high of 635 calendar days. But this average wait time only measures how long these individuals have already been waiting, not how much longer they will have to wait before their cases are resolved.
The severity of the rapidly growing crisis was revealed last January, when the court issued thousands of letters notifying individuals that their cases would be delayed for nearly five years more — until November 29, 2019. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which operates these courts, explained that the move was needed to make room in its hearing schedule for higher priority cases due to the flood of unaccompanied minors and mothers with children who crossed the border last year. The EOIR was widely quoted as saying, however, that the 2019 date was just a temporary placeholder, and offered assurances that the majority of cases would "probably" soon be rescheduled to earlier dates.
Figure 1. Number of Cases Pending in Immigration Court
for details see TRAC's Immigration Court Backlog tool, updated monthly
It has now been more than seven months since this initial wave of rescheduling notices was issued and the situation is worsening; the backlog of pending cases is currently up 11.9 percent since the beginning of this fiscal year. Furthermore, it is about a third (32.7%) higher than it was at the beginning of fiscal year 2014 (see Figure 1).
As previously noted, there were 456,644 cases pending before the Immigration Courts at the end of August 2015. This means the court backlog has increased by more than 100,000 cases from the 344,230 that were pending at the beginning of FY 2014.
Current Wait Times for a Hearing Before an Immigration Judge
As of the end of August 2015, the court's pending workload included 421,647 scheduled hearings, with an average additional wait of 436 calendar days. Note that this is based upon the average additional number of days after August 31 that individuals will have to wait until their scheduled hearing. Since the average individual has already been waiting 635 days, the projected total time from the date their case was filed until their hearing date is 635 days + 436 days, or a total of 1,071 days — just under three years (35.2 months).
Some individuals with pending cases will of course have to wait longer for a hearing while some will have a shorter wait. Table 1 presents information on the variation in wait times until a hearing is scheduled. The court now gives priority in scheduling hearings to unaccompanied minors, adults with children, and individuals who are detained or in custody. In fact, ten percent of the upcoming hearings are scheduled within 24 calendar days.
But how about the rest of the hearing dates? A total of 55,676 cases, or 13.2 percent of all hearings, are still scheduled some 1,551 days out — for November 29, 2019, the date set in that initial wave of court notices issued last January. But thousands of hearings won't commence until even later; for ten percent, the wait time for the hearings ranged from 1,552 days to 1,766 days into the future.
Master versus Individual Hearings
According to court records, seventy-one percent of all these scheduled hearings are what the court calls "master calendar hearings." As EOIR explains, an individual's first appearance before an Immigration Judge in a removal proceeding is at a master calendar hearing. At that point, many individuals are then scheduled to appear at a later session. The purpose of the master calendar hearing is to advise the individuals of their rights, explain the removal charges the government has filed against them, take pleadings, identify and attempt to narrow the factual and legal issues, and set deadlines for filing any papers needed for subsequent hearings.
Thus, except for individuals who want to immediately agree to their removal, the "master calendar hearing" is only the first hearing — not the last. Even after waiting for this hearing, generally at least one and perhaps several additional hearings will need to be scheduled. With schedules already so backed up, these added court hearings will delay a case even longer than the projected times shown in Table 1.
As another illustration of how much longer many individuals may need to wait, court records indicate that 63,208 master calendar hearings are currently not scheduled until November 29, 2019 or later.
Hearings Scheduled and Wait Times by Hearing Location
Wait times vary a great deal from one Immigration Court location to another. Some courts focus virtually exclusively on priority cases, such as individuals who are detained or are unaccompanied juveniles. For these, wait times will of course be much shorter. Conversely, wait times can be much longer in locations where a court is particularly understaffed with too few Immigration Court judges relative to their caseload.
Information about the wait times for the 136 Immigration Court hearing locations (by state) with at least 25 pending cases at the end of August 2015 can be found in Table 2 below. Included in the table are the number of pending cases along with the average number of days these cases have already waited — the traditional backlog and wait times. Next to these columns is the average number of additional days that cases are waiting for a hearing before an Immigration Judge, based on TRAC's new analysis of the scheduled hearings in each court. In the next column is the total projected wait time — the average days "already waited" plus the average of "more until hearing" has been scheduled.
Also listed is the calendar date of the latest hearing scheduled, which translates into the maximum period a pending case must wait until its hearing beyond August 31, according to the court's current calendar. (The table is interactive, so you can sort any column by clicking on its heading.)
Of course, hearings can be rescheduled sooner or moved later, so these statistics are merely projected figures for the average wait time based on the court's hearing schedule as of the end of August. In addition, it does not include any estimate of potential future delays that may be involved if there is a need for one or more additional hearings after the one now scheduled. Nonetheless these data provide a sobering snapshot of the current state of the Court's docket and what this implies about the long delays facing many individuals before their cases can be heard.
Focusing just on the number of wait days for cases pending at the end of August, Oklahoma City's hearing location had racked up the most — an average of 1,004 days. The others that made up the top five — all with average days above 900 for individuals with pending cases — were Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan each tied for second place, followed by Omaha, Nebraska in fourth and Denver, Colorado in fifth.
However, based upon scheduled hearing dates, even in this top five there were remarkably different averages for the additional number of days before a hearing was scheduled. These varied from an average additional 153 days in Oklahoma City to 1,434 additional days in Detroit. For Oklahoma City, the latest scheduled hearing date for anyone was June 20, 2016, less than a year away. In Chicago hearings were scheduled all the way through July 1, 2020.
Once we include the additional days before a hearing was actually scheduled, the total projected wait times for pending cases ranges from an average of 22 days at the San Francisco, California video hearing location and 24 days at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center in Oklahoma all the way up to 2,371 days for Detroit, Michigan.
Again, these projected wait times are based upon the current court hearing schedule. An unusually large number of additional days at a location often reflects the significant number of individuals assigned a November 29, 2019 hearing date. In Detroit, for example, over 75 percent of pending cases had been scheduled to be heard on that date. Clearly, that date is just a placeholder and schedules will have to change since that volume of cases cannot be accommodated in such a short time.
TRAC will continue to monitor changes in the scheduling of Immigration Court hearings and publish periodic updates to these figures.
Conclusion
The government data in this report provide concrete information about the extraordinary challenges — in terms of both enforcement and fairness — now facing the Immigration Courts. These issues in turn are becoming an increasingly important part of the current political debate over the country's immigration policies.
http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/405/
http://trac.syr.edu/whatsnew/email.150921.html
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Copyright 2015
in Overworked Immigration Courts
There were nearly a half million individual deportation cases (456,644) pending before the judges in the nation's clearly overwhelmed Immigration Courts at the end of August, according to the very latest information obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This backlog has been rising steadily for nearly a decade and has reached yet another new all-time high.
As a result, the average wait time for an individual in the Immigration Court's pending cases list has also reached an all-time high of 635 calendar days. But this average wait time only measures how long these individuals have already been waiting, not how much longer they will have to wait before their cases are resolved.
The severity of the rapidly growing crisis was revealed last January, when the court issued thousands of letters notifying individuals that their cases would be delayed for nearly five years more — until November 29, 2019. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which operates these courts, explained that the move was needed to make room in its hearing schedule for higher priority cases due to the flood of unaccompanied minors and mothers with children who crossed the border last year. The EOIR was widely quoted as saying, however, that the 2019 date was just a temporary placeholder, and offered assurances that the majority of cases would "probably" soon be rescheduled to earlier dates.
Figure 1. Number of Cases Pending in Immigration Court
for details see TRAC's Immigration Court Backlog tool, updated monthly
It has now been more than seven months since this initial wave of rescheduling notices was issued and the situation is worsening; the backlog of pending cases is currently up 11.9 percent since the beginning of this fiscal year. Furthermore, it is about a third (32.7%) higher than it was at the beginning of fiscal year 2014 (see Figure 1).
As previously noted, there were 456,644 cases pending before the Immigration Courts at the end of August 2015. This means the court backlog has increased by more than 100,000 cases from the 344,230 that were pending at the beginning of FY 2014.
Current Wait Times for a Hearing Before an Immigration Judge
As of the end of August 2015, the court's pending workload included 421,647 scheduled hearings, with an average additional wait of 436 calendar days. Note that this is based upon the average additional number of days after August 31 that individuals will have to wait until their scheduled hearing. Since the average individual has already been waiting 635 days, the projected total time from the date their case was filed until their hearing date is 635 days + 436 days, or a total of 1,071 days — just under three years (35.2 months).
Some individuals with pending cases will of course have to wait longer for a hearing while some will have a shorter wait. Table 1 presents information on the variation in wait times until a hearing is scheduled. The court now gives priority in scheduling hearings to unaccompanied minors, adults with children, and individuals who are detained or in custody. In fact, ten percent of the upcoming hearings are scheduled within 24 calendar days.
But how about the rest of the hearing dates? A total of 55,676 cases, or 13.2 percent of all hearings, are still scheduled some 1,551 days out — for November 29, 2019, the date set in that initial wave of court notices issued last January. But thousands of hearings won't commence until even later; for ten percent, the wait time for the hearings ranged from 1,552 days to 1,766 days into the future.
Master versus Individual Hearings
According to court records, seventy-one percent of all these scheduled hearings are what the court calls "master calendar hearings." As EOIR explains, an individual's first appearance before an Immigration Judge in a removal proceeding is at a master calendar hearing. At that point, many individuals are then scheduled to appear at a later session. The purpose of the master calendar hearing is to advise the individuals of their rights, explain the removal charges the government has filed against them, take pleadings, identify and attempt to narrow the factual and legal issues, and set deadlines for filing any papers needed for subsequent hearings.
Thus, except for individuals who want to immediately agree to their removal, the "master calendar hearing" is only the first hearing — not the last. Even after waiting for this hearing, generally at least one and perhaps several additional hearings will need to be scheduled. With schedules already so backed up, these added court hearings will delay a case even longer than the projected times shown in Table 1.
As another illustration of how much longer many individuals may need to wait, court records indicate that 63,208 master calendar hearings are currently not scheduled until November 29, 2019 or later.
Hearings Scheduled and Wait Times by Hearing Location
Wait times vary a great deal from one Immigration Court location to another. Some courts focus virtually exclusively on priority cases, such as individuals who are detained or are unaccompanied juveniles. For these, wait times will of course be much shorter. Conversely, wait times can be much longer in locations where a court is particularly understaffed with too few Immigration Court judges relative to their caseload.
Information about the wait times for the 136 Immigration Court hearing locations (by state) with at least 25 pending cases at the end of August 2015 can be found in Table 2 below. Included in the table are the number of pending cases along with the average number of days these cases have already waited — the traditional backlog and wait times. Next to these columns is the average number of additional days that cases are waiting for a hearing before an Immigration Judge, based on TRAC's new analysis of the scheduled hearings in each court. In the next column is the total projected wait time — the average days "already waited" plus the average of "more until hearing" has been scheduled.
Also listed is the calendar date of the latest hearing scheduled, which translates into the maximum period a pending case must wait until its hearing beyond August 31, according to the court's current calendar. (The table is interactive, so you can sort any column by clicking on its heading.)
Of course, hearings can be rescheduled sooner or moved later, so these statistics are merely projected figures for the average wait time based on the court's hearing schedule as of the end of August. In addition, it does not include any estimate of potential future delays that may be involved if there is a need for one or more additional hearings after the one now scheduled. Nonetheless these data provide a sobering snapshot of the current state of the Court's docket and what this implies about the long delays facing many individuals before their cases can be heard.
Focusing just on the number of wait days for cases pending at the end of August, Oklahoma City's hearing location had racked up the most — an average of 1,004 days. The others that made up the top five — all with average days above 900 for individuals with pending cases — were Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan each tied for second place, followed by Omaha, Nebraska in fourth and Denver, Colorado in fifth.
However, based upon scheduled hearing dates, even in this top five there were remarkably different averages for the additional number of days before a hearing was scheduled. These varied from an average additional 153 days in Oklahoma City to 1,434 additional days in Detroit. For Oklahoma City, the latest scheduled hearing date for anyone was June 20, 2016, less than a year away. In Chicago hearings were scheduled all the way through July 1, 2020.
Once we include the additional days before a hearing was actually scheduled, the total projected wait times for pending cases ranges from an average of 22 days at the San Francisco, California video hearing location and 24 days at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center in Oklahoma all the way up to 2,371 days for Detroit, Michigan.
Again, these projected wait times are based upon the current court hearing schedule. An unusually large number of additional days at a location often reflects the significant number of individuals assigned a November 29, 2019 hearing date. In Detroit, for example, over 75 percent of pending cases had been scheduled to be heard on that date. Clearly, that date is just a placeholder and schedules will have to change since that volume of cases cannot be accommodated in such a short time.
TRAC will continue to monitor changes in the scheduling of Immigration Court hearings and publish periodic updates to these figures.
Conclusion
The government data in this report provide concrete information about the extraordinary challenges — in terms of both enforcement and fairness — now facing the Immigration Courts. These issues in turn are becoming an increasingly important part of the current political debate over the country's immigration policies.
http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/405/
http://trac.syr.edu/whatsnew/email.150921.html
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Copyright 2015
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Criminal Statutes Most Frequently Used in Immigration Prosecution
Criminal Statutes Most Frequently Used in Immigration Prosecution
Click on the statute to view textU.S. Code | Description | ||
08 USC 01160 | Visas for Special agricultural workers | ||
08 USC 01253 | Alien hindering his/her removal from the US | ||
08 USC 01306 | Immigration - Penalties | ||
08 USC 01323 | Unlawful bringing of aliens into US | ||
08 USC 01324 | Bringing in and harboring certain aliens | ||
08 USC 01324a | Unlawful employment of aliens | ||
08 USC 01325 | Entry of alien at improper time or place; etc. | ||
08 USC 01326 | Reentry of deported alien | ||
08 USC 01328 | Importation of alien for immoral purpose | ||
18 USC 00002 | Aiding and Abetting | ||
18 USC 00003 | Accessory after the fact | ||
18 USC 00111 | Assaulting, resisting, impeding certain officers | ||
18 USC 00115 | Influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a Federal official | ||
18 USC 00201 | Bribery of public officials and witnesses | ||
18 USC 00371 | Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud US | ||
18 USC 00499 | Military, naval, or official passes | ||
18 USC 00545 | Smuggling goods into the United States | ||
18 USC 00554 | Smuggling goods from the United States | ||
18 USC 00654 | Officer or employee of US converting property | ||
18 USC 00751 | Escape - Prisoners in custody | ||
18 USC 00758 | High speed flight from immigration checkpoint | ||
18 USC 00911 | False personification - Citizen of the US | ||
18 USC 00922 | Firearms; Unlawful acts | ||
18 USC 00930 | Possession of firearms/dangerous weapons in federal facility | ||
18 USC 01001 | Fraud/false statements or entries generally | ||
18 USC 01015 | Fraud - Natzation, citizenship, alien registry | ||
18 USC 01028 | Fraud and related activity - id documents | ||
18 USC 01028A | Aggravated Identity Theft | ||
18 USC 01029 | Fraud and related activity - access devices | ||
18 USC 01203 | Kidnapping - Hostage taking | ||
18 USC 01346 | Scheme or artifice to defraud | ||
18 USC 01349 | Mail Fraud - Attempt and Conspiracy | ||
18 USC 01362 | Malicious Mischief - communications | ||
18 USC 01425 | Procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlaw | ||
18 USC 01426 | Reproduction of naturalization | ||
18 USC 01505 | Obstruction of proceedings before departments, etc | ||
18 USC 01542 | False statement in application and use of passport | ||
18 USC 01543 | Forgery or false use of passport | ||
18 USC 01544 | Misuse of passport | ||
18 USC 01546 | Fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents | ||
18 USC 01591 | Sex trafficking of children by force, fraud or coercion | ||
18 USC 01622 | Subornation of perjury | ||
18 USC 01951 | Hobbs Act | ||
18 USC 01952 | Racketeering -interstate/foreign travel/transport | ||
18 USC 01956 | Laundering of monetary instruments | ||
18 USC 01961 | RICO - definitions | ||
18 USC 01962 | RICO - prohibited activities | ||
18 USC 02199 | Stowaways on vessels or aircraft | ||
18 USC 02237 | Criminal Sanction for Failure to heave to or provide false information | ||
18 USC 02250 | Fail to register as sex offender after traveling interstate commerce | ||
18 USC 02252 | Material involving sexual exploitation of minors | ||
18 USC 02314 | Transportation of stolen goods, etc | ||
18 USC 02421 | Transportation for illegal sexual activity and related crimes | ||
18 USC 02422 | Transport for sex - Coercion and enticement | ||
18 USC 03144 | Release or detention of a material witness | ||
18 USC 03146 | Penalty for failure to appear | ||
18 USC 03148 | Sanctions for violation of a release | ||
18 USC 03565 | Revocation of probation | ||
18 USC 03583 | Term of supervised release after imprisonment | ||
18 USC 04107 | Verify of consent of offender to transfer from US | ||
18 USC 05032 | Delinquency Proceedings in District Court | ||
19 USC 01459 | Reporting requirements for individuals | ||
21 USC 00841 | Drug Abuse Prevention & Control-Prohibited acts A | ||
21 USC 00844 | Penalty for simple possession | ||
21 USC 00846 | Attempt and conspiracy | ||
21 USC 00952 | Importation of controlled substances | ||
31 USC 05332 | Bulk Cash Smuggling into or out of the United States | ||
33 USC 01908 | Prevention of Pollution from Ships - Penalties | ||
42 USC 00408 | Fed Old Age, Survivors & Disab Insur -Penalties | ||
46 USC 70503 | Possession control substance on vessel subject to jurisdiction of US |
http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/aboutLaw/
Copyright 2015, TRAC Reports, Inc.
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Re: TRAC Immigration
Number of Noncitizens ICE Sought To Remove Who Were Allowed To Remain In U.S.
through September 2015
Requires Adobe Flash for chart: http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/apprep_outcome_stay.php
through September 2015
Requires Adobe Flash for chart: http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/apprep_outcome_stay.php
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