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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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The backlog of immigration court cases awaiting hearings has more than doubled since 2021, new data from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) showed Monday.
Over 4 million cases were pending, as of January 16, compared to the 1.7 million at the end of September 2021. The wait list, plus a lack of immigration judges, potentially stand in the way of the Trump administration's plans to deport nearly three times as many.
"The courts have hired up to the maximum and so, under the Biden administration, they hired as many judges as they were allowed to by Congress because it's Congress that sets the level of funding and the number of judges that the courts can get," Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), told Newsweek. "But the larger picture here is one in which ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has an annual budget of more than $9 billion and the immigration courts by contrast have a budget as I recall of less than $1 billion."
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Newsweek reached out to the DOJ for comment via email Monday afternoon.
Why It Matters
President Donald Trump was elected after a campaign heavily focused on illegal immigration and the promise of deporting upwards of 11 million people without legal status in the U.S. The policy has been shown to be popular among voters across the political spectrum, before and after the election.
A New York Times/Ipsos survey (January 2-10) found that 55 percent of voters back Trump's mass deportation plan, while 88 percent support deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Most Democrats and Republicans agree that the immigration system is broken.
While the president has promised deportation on a large scale and signed an executive order to bypass the court system for many cases, U.S. law will still require many immigrants facing removal to face a judge.
What To Know
Over the past decade, the number of judges available to hear immigration cases has risen, from 249 in 2014 to 735 in 2024. At the same time, the number of pending cases has also risen, going from 744,641 in 2015 to 4,006,396 in the first quarter of 2025, leaving each judge with around 5,400 cases each.
The Trump administration is hoping to cut the backlog through executive orders signed within days of the president's return to the White House. One allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to use what is known as expedited removal for those who entered the U.S. illegally and have been in the country for less than two years. The process bypasses the courts and can be completed within hours.
Another memo instructed ICE to bypass the courts in cases of immigrants who arrived under the now-defunct CBP One app or through humanitarian parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans—another Biden-era policy scrapped by Trump.
Some immigration advocates, including the Vera Institute, have warned that attempts to prevent immigrants having access to legal representation, which have faced challenges, will also slow down court cases, as migrants are left to navigate the system themselves.
The Trump administration has been actively sharing data on its immigration enforcement since January 20, with an update shared last week showing over 5,700 people had been removed from the country so far, while several thousand illegal immigrants have reportedly been detained by ICE and other DHS agencies.
The court case backlog is not the only issue facing the mass deportation plan, with a lack of detention space and financial resources from Congress standing in the way. Border czar Tom Homan has asked lawmakers to act on the latter, while extra space is being created at Guantanamo Bay to hold those awaiting removal.
The DOJ manages the immigration court system, which has an annual budget of around $1 billion. In its 2025 budget proposal, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) asked for funding for an extra 25 judges, as well as $75 million to expand its capacity.
What People Are Saying
Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told Newsweek: "There are really important protections provided through the immigration court system, including due process and the possibility of filing for protections that are guaranteed by U.S. domestic law, as well as international treaties, including asylum, and all the faster processes, such as expedited removal, do not have the same due process protections.
She added: "Expedited removal actually happens in a matter of hours in some cases, so it can be extremely difficult for people to try to obtain an attorney and even learn about and understand the process that they're going through, whereas a immigration court judges are required to explain what rights people have and what relief may be available to them."
President Donald Trump in executive order "Protecting The American People Against Invasion" on January 20: "...the Secretary of Homeland Security shall promptly take appropriate action to use all other provisions of the immigration laws or any other Federal law...to ensure the efficient and expedited removal of aliens from the United States."
What Happens Next?
With data only available from before the Trump administration, experts will be watching to see what changes in the next update in a few months' time. One move could include a return to case quotas for judges, as seen during the Trump's first term in the White House.
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