ObamaGRATION: Clogged Immigration Courts Slow Hearings

Francisco Uribe, a jeweler in San Antonio, has waited more than a year for a chance to tell an immigration judge why he shouldn't be deported.

He recently found out he will get his day in court—in December 2016.

Francisco Uribe, who has a December 2016 court-hearing 

date, faces the threat of deportation. 

Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Wall Street Journal

Mr. Uribe's long wait got even longer because of an Obama administration push to accelerate deportation hearings for people caught illegally crossing into the country, with the hope of deterring a surge of Central American children and families.

Recently apprehended immigrants are going to the front of the line in the court system. Everyone else is getting moved further back, worsening a chronic U.S. immigration-court backlog that for many people means waiting years for a hearing.

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"I felt like a bucket of cold water was poured over me," said Mr. Uribe, a 54-year-old a native of Mexico who is married to a U.S. citizen and has been legally living in the country for some 25 years. He became subject to removal after he was convicted in January 2013 of a misdemeanor, melting gold jewelry purchased by his shop, before a mandatory wait period. The jewelry turned out to be stolen.

Underfunded and understaffed for years, the immigration courts are emerging as a major bottleneck for officials under pressure to quickly process and deport suspected illegal immigrants. The number of pending cases stood at more than 375,000 in June, with average processing times stretching for 520 days, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a project at Syracuse University that gathers and analyzes federal data.

Thousands of additional cases are expected to hit courts in coming months as people recently caught illegally crossing the border are funneled through the immigration system. From October to July, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 220,000 illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico along the southwest border, according to agency statistics.

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