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ARTICLE · 17 JANUARY 2024

Immigration Court Backlogs Continue Into 2024

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The New Year kicks off with an old problem: extreme backlogs burrowed in the U.S. immigration system. The number of immigration court cases pending adjudication as of November 2023...

United StatesImmigration
Tejas Shah
Tejas Shah
Tieranny Cutler
Tieranny Cutler
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The New Year kicks off with an old problem: extreme backlogs burrowed in the U.S. immigration system. The number of immigration court cases pending adjudication as of November 2023 was the highest in U.S. history, with the total count exceeding 3 million, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

While an old problem, the issue has been exacerbated in recent years. Notably, the volume of cases increased by 1 million in between November 2022 and November 2023. This leap has left the approximately 682 immigration judges that the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) employs ill-equipped to effectively manage all matters on the docket. Although the EOIR added more than 250 immigration judges to its roster in 2016, and these immigration judges close, on average, nearly 1,000 cases per year, the backlog remains. These efforts simply aren't enough; the EOIR is catching the flow of a waterfall with a spoon.

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