Litigation

AZ: Immigration Case Backlog Causes Delay of Years

By Peter Hardin

The threat to impartial justice in the immigration courts is illustrated by an investigative report in the Arizona Republic focusing on the situation in that border state.

The newspaper reports two conclusions: heightened enforcement  is “undermining the ability of judges to rule fairly because they are under growing pressure to decide cases quickly;” and the case backlog that has been created is so severe that in Phoenix, at least, it “will take years for judges to decide whether immigrants facing deportation can legally stay in the U.S.”

In Arizona, crackdowns on illegal immigration have been especially intense. The immigration court in Phoenix received 4,867 new cases in the past fiscal year, up 12 percent from a year earlier; the senior of three immigration judges was scheduling in January final hearings in immigrant removal cases for August 2013.

Last week, the American Bar Association voted to urge U.S. lawmakers to eliminate the existing immigration courts system and replace it with a new, independent court (see Gavel Grab). Immigration judges are not part of the federal judiciary, but work for the Justice Department–which also employs prosecutors in the immigration courts.

“The immigration courts are basically dealing with life and death issues but with the resources of traffic courts,” said Malcolm Rich, executive director of the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, a partner of Justice at Stake. The Chicago group issued a report in June declaring that because of the flood of new cases, immigration judges can’t do their job properly.

To learn more, check out Justice at Stake’s issues page.

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 15, 2010 (boomark / email).