Our immigration courts remain backlogged, denying speedy justice to asylum seekers. There are approximately 300,000 backlogs awaiting adjudication. The rise in immigration court backlogs is not a recent problem, but it has been steadily increasing since at least 2005. One of the key causes of this problem is the failure of the Bush administration to fill a vacant and newly funded immigration judge during a period of political employment scandals. From fiscal 2001 to his fiscal year 2008, the number of applications for government deportation orders increased by 30%, but the number of immigration judges on the bench increased little and declined for some periods. did. Subsequent hiring to fill these vacancies during the Obama administration was not enough to handle all the cases awaiting attention.
There are still backlogs in immigration court, but the Obama administration has launched two initiatives to clear the backlog. In the first quarter of 2012, immigration courts issued 2,429 fewer deportation orders than in the fourth quarter of 2011. Therefore, the proportion of cases leading to deportation orders decreased slightly to 64.1%. In more than a third of his cases, the individual was allowed to stay in the United States at least temporarily.
This historic decline in deportations began in August 2011 when the Obama administration began reviewing her 300,000 backlogs. The stated goal in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) review is to better prioritize and reduce back-up pending issues that cause lengthy delays in immigration court proceedings for noncitizens seeking deportation. was. To achieve this long-term goal, ICE attorneys, with the support of court clerks, legal clerks and paralegals, have completed all 300,000 cases as part of this Prosecutorial Discretion (PD) initiative. Redirected in a dramatic effort to review and consider which cases to focus on. Overall case disposals decreased as a result during these reviews. As a result, court actions in the first quarter of 2012 fell to 50,489 overall, the lowest level since 2002.
Another Obama administration initiative has reduced the number of deportations. On June 15, 2012, the President announced a policy to give undocumented young noncitizens the opportunity to work and study in the United States without fear of deportation. Under the new policy, ICE will halt attempts to deport these undocumented noncitizens who are under the age