As ICE agents fan out across the DMV arresting people who they say are in the United States illegally, the News4 I-Team found most of those arrested are headed into an immigration court system already backlogged for years. News4’s Ted Oberg reports.
As ICE agents fan out across the DMV and around the country arresting people who they say are in the United States illegally, the News4 I-Team found most of those arrested are headed into an immigration court system already backlogged for years.
The backlog is so severe one study suggests it would take 300 more immigration judges to manage all the cases, in addition to the 700 already on the job.
During our reporting, the News4 I-Team met Hassan, who came to the United States from Egypt in February 2020 seeking asylum. He asked us not to use his full name, out of fear about the current climate in the country and how tenuous his situation is.
He still remembers the day he landed at Dulles International Airport.
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“February 25th, 2020, a CBP officer asked me, ‘What's the reason for your visit?’” he said.
That day five years ago, he told the agent he was seeking asylum and leaving a country where he said he was receiving medical treatment bordering on torture.
He did not know what to expect, but said the agent told him it would not be long.
“He was very, like, encouraging to me,” Hassan told the I-Team. “After one year, you can get your permanent residency, green card and work and live in the United States.”
That was five years ago.
That night and for months afterward, Hassan was kept in ICE custody at facilities across Virginia and South Carolina as he tried to prove his asylum case. He did not know if any day he went back to court, it would be his last day in the United States. With each visit, that one-year window kept slipping.
“It's very frustrating," Katharine Gordon, Hassan’s attorney at the AMICA Center for Immigrant Rights, told the I-Team.
Gordon said today she sees new cases with even longer wait times than when Hassan entered the system.
“For a person who maybe has just filed their application for asylum … there are court proceedings that have a 2028 deadline right now,” she said.
That’s more than three years away.
Gordon did tell the I-Team migrants already in the system might not have to wait that long.
Millions of immigration cases waiting
Across the country, 3.7 million cases are currently backlogged in U.S. immigration courts, according to TRAC, a data research organization at Syracuse University.
The backlog has nearly tripled since 2020, when 1.3 million cases were waiting to be resolved.
Nearly 2 million of the cases are people seeking asylum in the U.S. who say they’re fleeing violence, war, hunger, pain, or persecution.
As part of President Donald Trump's newest immigration crackdown, he is pledged to deport millions of people. When they are picked up, those people are put into an already-backlogged system.
Retired immigration judge James Fujimoto told the I-Team, “You can't just say we're going to deport you and put you on a plane or a bus.”
Fujimoto served as an immigration judge for 29 years. He left the bench in 2019 as Trump's “zero tolerance” policy for immigration cases was taking hold.
The effects of ‘zero tolerance’ policies
Under “zero tolerance,” U.S. attorneys had no choice but to prosecute every immigrant without legal status, whether they faced other criminal charges or not.
Statistics from TRAC analyzed by the I-Team show the dramatic increase in the backlog since. During Trump’s first full year of “zero tolerance” in 2018, with no way to filter out those who faced violent charges first, the backlog grew by a third. Last year, it grew by another 30%.
"You can only do what you can do,” Fujimoto told the I-Team as he considered the current backlog. “But it is very, very difficult to grapple with the numbers when they when they get that high.”
Those we spoke with fear “zero tolerance” and the delays it brought the first time are coming back and that the backlog will grow even longer.
“I think it will just increase substantially so that 2028, I'm not sure if that will go even further on than that,” Gordon, the immigration attorney, told the I-Team, “it will just mean more people who are living in the shadows who do have very, very strong claims for relief."
Local immigration backlogs
There is no immigration court in D.C..
In Maryland, at most recent check, the backlog stood at 55,038 cases. That’s up 51% since 2020.
In Virginia, it was 59,428 cases, which is slightly down since 2020.
Courts in the DMV are far from the worst backlogged in the nation, but even here, the average immigration caseload is 1,258 cases per judge.
Trying to explain the impact on judges, Fujimoto said, "It's not the fault of the people that are there. They're trying, but there's just not enough.”
Immigration judges fired
As part of the effort to reshape the federal workforce, the Trump administration recently fired 28 immigration judges. At least three of them were assigned to Virginia and Maryland.
Matt Biggs is president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, the union representing immigration judges.
“It makes no sense whatsoever for a president to campaign on this on the one hand and then go and fire the very judges that hear the deportation cases on the other,” Biggs said.
Speaking directly to the president, Biggs added, “Congratulations! You just increased the backlog by firing these judges.”
The I-Team asked the White House about the firings and any plan to shrink the backlog but has not heard back.
Experts say migrants hoping to call America home will potentially put their lives on hold for years, not knowing if this country they have dreamed of living in is willing to have them or not.
Hassan’s wait has been full of “a lot of uncertainty,” he said.
His American journey that started on that day at Dulles finally changed last July, when his asylum claim was granted after more than four years of waiting.
“It was like happiness mixed with hopeful, as a future hopeful to start a new life," Hassan told the I-Team through a smile.
But seven months later, Hassan is still waiting for the system to finish his paperwork so he can legally work. His dream to be an interpreter or peer counselor.
