Is the US immigration court system broken?

Since 2002, funding for immigration enforcement has quadrupled, from US$4.5 bn to $20.1 bn in 2016

In the US today, a single immigration case takes an average of 677 days simply to get to the initial scheduling hearing.

There are more than half a million cases in the system, and just over 300 judges working on them. The Trump administration’s push to aggressively enforce immigration laws will make this backlog worse.

Since 2002, funding for immigration enforcement has more than quadrupled, from US$4.5 billion to $20.1 billion in 2016. During the same time period, resources for immigration courts have increased by much less – 74 per