Nearly 1.6 million asylum applications are pending in U.S. immigration courts and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – the highest number of pending asylum cases ever recorded, according to data analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
U.S. immigration courts have seen an increase of more than seven times in asylum cases from fiscal year 2012, when there were 100,000 pending cases, to the end of fiscal year 2022, when the backlog grew to over 750,000, according to the university.
Asylum seekers come from 219 different countries and speak 418 different languages, according to the group. About 3 in 10 are children under 18 years old, and the top countries of origin include Guatemala, Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil. Florida and Massachusetts are among the states with the highest growth in asylum applications.
The average wait time for an asylum hearing is about 4.3 years, but in Omaha, Nebraska – the court with the largest backlog – the wait time is 5.9 years, according to the group.
An increasing number of asylum seekers are being monitored electronically through the Department of Homeland Security’s “Alternatives to Detention” program, while a small fraction – about 2,000 – are in ICE detention, according to the university.
Despite the low temperatures that have been affecting almost the entire country in recent weeks, border agents in the El Paso area continue to encounter between 1,500 and 1,600 immigrants every day.
Source: CNN