There are more than 500,000 pending immigration court cases for illegal aliens which will decide whether or not they are eligible to remain in the U.S., according to new data released.
In data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, released by Fox News, a tally of pending immigration cases show that there are approximately 542,411 that have yet to be decided by an immigration judge.
That number means American taxpayers pay for illegal aliens to sometimes be held in detention centers for 673 days before their case even hits an immigration judge’s courtroom.
In states with much larger migrant populations–like Texas and California–the wait period is even longer, running roughly three years. In sanctuary San Francisco, there are 38,428 pending cases.
U.S. Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks told Fox News that the massive backlog in immigration courts has been made worse, as administration after administration has done hardly nothing to remedy the problem.
“We have been a neglected part of the immigration enforcement world for so long,” Marks said in the interview. “There are legitimate concerns about how long cases pend in the immigration court.”
The neglect could soon change with President Donald Trump’s administration, which is committing new plans and procedures to handle the immigration court backlog.
In a letter from the Department of Justice (DOJ), the administration is expected to move 50 immigration judges to detention facilities in areas like Adelanto and San Diego, California, as well as Chicago, Illinois, as Breitbart Texas reported.
Judges will hear cases from 6am to 6pm with two rotating shifts.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose task it is to help remedy the problem, has long been a critic of the nation’s immigration system, arguing that lack of border security, a slow court process and influxes in low-skilled workers all put strain on social safety nets and American taxpayers.
John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.