Once overcrowded immigration courts have worsened to being overwhelmed with a 25 percent uptick in cases since President Donald Trump took office that has led to a backlog that tops 700,000, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The backlog has more than doubled in six years, and the average case takes two years to snake its way through the system, the Journal reports.
While Congress authorized 484 judge positions in this year's budget, it's a lengthy hiring process that takes time. In the meantime 334 judges slog through 2,000 cases each that helps the immigrants who don't belong while hurting the ones that do, the Journal reports.
"The winner is an alien who has a really lousy case, because they get to be here for years waiting for a case to come up," Judge Lawrence Burman told the Journal.
The Trump administration has widened the dragnet for arrests, including reopening closed cases; in 2017, 21,000 closed cases were put back on the calendars of the courts, the Journal reports.
It's a blanket policy that critics would like to see be more discerning until the judicial system can catch up.
"We should be focusing enforcement on those who present a danger to our community," Jeremy McKinney, an immigration lawyer told the Journal.
Yet another strategy is to give immigration judges "bright line" standards that could mitigate the many delays in the average case. Instead of a "cancellation of removal" order which allows an immigrant to stay, quickly deporting illegals would lessen the load and send a message, the Journal reported.
"If you create the perception that you can't stay forever, fewer people will enter, and in the long run, the numbers [in court] will fall," Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies told the Journal.
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