Transcript
Russell Wheeler: Turning to the immigration courts themselves, it’s a bit of a oversimplification, but, basically, the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals are concerned principally with hearing petitions by aliens who are seeking to avoid enforcement of a Department of Homeland Security order that they be removed, or, in the old parlance, deported.
The immigration courts themselves consist of over 200 judges serving in 50 or so courts around the country, and, as you can see, compared to the caseload of the district courts, they really have an overwhelming workload.
As the figures before you show, last year, they heard some 272,000 matters, which is a bit of a technical term; there were other matters, as well, but 272,000 removal matters; that’s a caseload per judge of about 1,200 cases a year. The average federal district judge, criminal and civil, has about a 480 caseload per judge.
So, they are, as we’ll discuss, under heavy pressure.
Also, as we’ll discuss, the aliens in the immigration courts are not represented by counsel in over half the instances. The Congress has very graciously said that aliens may be represented by counsel, but it said, in the words of the statute, “at no cost to the government.” And, then, furthermore, the decisions of these immigration judges are pretty much final in all cases. There are appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals, but it’s about a 10 percent appeal rate. So, for all practical purpose, the decisions of these immigration courts are final.
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