3.8 Million Cases
Nearly 3.8 million deportation cases are pending in U.S. immigration courts. The average wait from initial filing to final decision has stretched to nearly 900 days, almost two and a half years.
3.8 million cases pending. 900-day average wait. Only 37% have a lawyer.
That is not a queue. It is a system that cannot process its own caseload. People facing deportation live in legal limbo for years, unable to work legally in most cases, unable to plan, unable to resolve their status in either direction.
37% With Representation
Only 37% of immigrants in removal proceedings have legal representation. There is no constitutional right to a lawyer in immigration court. If you cannot afford one, you represent yourself against a trained government prosecutor in a proceeding conducted in a language you may not speak, under rules you were never taught.
The Migration Policy Institute found that immigrants with lawyers are significantly more likely to win their cases. The gap between represented and unrepresented outcomes is not small. It is the difference between staying and being deported for many people with valid claims.
The System Is Not Designed to Work
Immigration courts are not part of the federal judiciary. They operate under the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is part of the Department of Justice. The Attorney General can overrule immigration judges, set case quotas, and issue policy guidance that changes how cases are decided. The judges are not independent. They serve at the pleasure of the executive branch.
The number of immigration judges has dropped even as the caseload grew. Courts that were already overwhelmed lost the capacity to keep up. Cases are rescheduled years out. Evidence goes stale. Witnesses become unreachable. The delay itself becomes a form of punishment.
What 900 Days Looks Like
A family that arrived at the border in 2024 and filed an asylum claim may not have their case heard until 2027. During those 900 days, their children attend American schools, learn English, make friends, and build lives in a community. Then a judge they have never met decides in 15 minutes whether they stay or go.
An asylum seeker who was detained at the border and released with a court date may receive a notice to appear in a court hundreds of miles from where they were resettled. ICE has separately escalated enforcement during this period, arresting people who are waiting for court dates that the court itself cannot schedule fast enough to process.
The backlog is not an accident. It is the result of decades of underfunding, political interference in judicial appointments, and a system that was never given the resources to handle the caseload Congress created through immigration enforcement expansion.
Read more on the Immigration hub and the green card ban brief.