What Will It Take to Eliminate the Immigration Court Backlog? Assessing “Judge Team” Hiring Needs Based on Changed Conditions and the Need for Broader Reform

Executive Summary

This paper examines the staffing needs of the US Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), as it seeks to eliminate an immigration court backlog, which approached 2.5 million pending cases at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2023. A previous study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) attributed the backlog to systemic, long-neglected problems in the broader US immigration system. This paper provides updated estimates of the number of immigration judges (IJs) and “judge teams” (IJ teams) needed to eliminate the backlog over ten and five years based on different case receipt and completion scenarios. It also introduces a data tool that will permit policymakers, administrators and researchers to make their own estimates of IJ team hiring needs based on changing case receipt and completion data. Finally, the paper outlines the pressing need for reform of the US immigration system, including a well-resourced, robust, and independent court system, particularly in light of record “encounters” of migrants at US borders in FY 2022 and 2023.

BacklogPredictor3000: An Interactive Tool to Estimate IJ Team Hiring Needs Based on Updated Information and Different Assumptions

IJ productivity, case receipts and completions, and other variables affecting the backlog will change over time. For this reason, the authors have developed an interactive tool that permits policymakers, administrators, and others to assess IJ hiring needs based on changed circumstances and under different scenarios. This tool, the BacklogPredictor3000, is available on the CMS website at https://cmsny.org/backlogpredictor3000-interactive-tool-immigration-court-backlog/.

This interactive tool, “The BacklogPredictor3000,” and its related software, structure, organization, and code, are the intellectual property of and are owned by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. Application, use, and/or citation or reference to the Backlog Predictor3000 in the course of generation of estimates for publications of any kind must cite to the source article:

Kerwin, D., & Kerwin, B. (2024). What Will It Take to Eliminate the Immigration Court Backlog? Assessing “Judge Team” Hiring Needs Based on Changed Conditions and the Need for Broader Reform. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/23315024241226645.

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