WASHINGTON: The backlog of cases before the US immigration courts has reached such a level that it has prompted, in the eyes of the authorities, asylum seekers to scramble into the United States in hopes of working years without being deported.

About 650 immigration judges have more than 2.4 million files, according to the New York State-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) organization at Syracuse University.

“We’re dealing with absolutely terrifying volumes,” said David Neal, director of the Justice Department’s immigration review service, recently at a symposium hosted by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a Washington-based think tank.

Last year, 313,000 files were finalized, but the Department of Homeland Security filed 700,000 new ones, “double what we were able to close,” he said.

Asylum seekers, who represent 40% of court workload, wait an average of four years before getting their first hearing, according to MPI. And even longer to complete the procedure.

A period where they can work in the countryside, save and send money to their families.

“It is clear that the current slow process of legal migration has become the main driving factor driving immigration into the region,” Blas Nunez-Neto, a border and migration policy official at the Department of Homeland Security, said at the symposium.

“Fair” and “effective”

Candidates for entry into the United States, for many from Latin Americasometimes paying smugglers up to $15,000 to get to the border.

And they do so, according to Blas Nunez-Neto, because “once they are in the migration justice system and have filed the necessary paperwork, they qualify for a work permit”.

According to him, “the legal system has basically become a legal shortcut for people to come to the United States”.

Most of the migrants were once Mexican and were rarely asked for asylum. But they now mostly come from other countries and many “seek protection, though relatively few do eventually,” the official assured.

In a new report, MPI offers ways to modernize migration laws, unchanged for 36 years, to soften the courts: closing cases that don’t meet the required criteria, encouraging the use of technology, reinstating asylum officers to administer border procedures without going through judges, and reversing priorities by deciding the last case to arrive rather than the first filed, lists Muzaffar Chishti, researcher at the Institute. .

But Jojo Annobil, of the Immigrant Justice Corps association that provides legal assistance to migrants, does not want “a system where the last to arrive is the first to leave, and where people are deported without a defense attorney”.

For David Neal, of the Ministry of Justice, we must succeed in being “fair” and “efficient.”

Fewer arrivals

The delay, said Jojo Annobil, was also caused by other factors, such as the ongoing trial delays and the obligation to take asylum seekers’ fingerprints every 15 months.

Arrival numbers in the United States have been falling since May, when Joe Biden’s administration passed new rules to replace “Title 42”, a measure that was enabled by his predecessor Donald Trump and which allowed, under the pretext of a pandemic, to quickly return all migrants entering the country.

In June, American authorities counted 99,545 entries at the border with Mexico, or 30% less than in May.

The new rules limit the right to asylum in practice and have been challenged in court by several civil rights associations: they stipulate that applicants – with the exception of unaccompanied minors – manage to secure an appointment on the phone application that centralizes requests, “CBP One”, or to submit their request in one of the countries crossed.

Without this, their request is deemed invalid and they may be subject to expedited deportation procedures, barring them from entering American soil for five years.