LOS ANGELES — The federal government shutdown last year delayed more than 37,000 immigration hearings by months or years for immigrants already waiting in lengthy lines to plead for asylum or green cards.
While the country’s immigration courts are now running as usual, immigrants who had hoped to have their cases resolved in October so they could travel abroad to see family or get a job have instead had their lives put on hold. Many had already waited years for a hearing date in the notoriously backlogged courts, which determine whether immigrants should be deported or allowed to stay.
Now, some hearings have been pushed into later this year, and thousands more have been shelved until 2015 or later.
“This is a big task, and not one that will be accomplished quickly, especially given our current staffing shortage,” Chief Immigration Judge Brian O’Leary wrote in an Oct. 17 email to immigration judges and court administrators that The Associated Press obtained. A day earlier, O’Leary wrote in a separate email to staff that the tally of deferred hearings had surpassed 37,000 and many immigrants probably wouldn’t get their cases heard until at least 2015.
The delays triggered by last year’s federal government shutdown that closed national parks and furloughed government workers has further strained an immigration court system already beset with ballooning caseloads, yearslong waits and a shortage of judges. The impact on immigrants has been uneven. Those with strong cases for staying in the U.S. are in limbo even longer, while those who face likely deportation have won more time in the United States. “For some people, it probably was a huge reprieve,” said Andres Benach, an immigration attorney in Washington. “Just not my clients.”
The situation is especially dire for asylum seekers who may have left family behind in danger. They cannot apply to bring relatives to the United States unless they win their cases.
For others, the delay means more uncertainty. Gladys Hirayda Shahian said she has been trying to obtain a green card through her American husband for more than a decade. After getting turned away at the airport after a trip to her native Guatemala in the 1990s, Shahian said, she crossed the border illegally to reunite with him and filed her residency application.
Since then, the 42-year-old from Encino, Calif., has been unable to take her U.S.-born children to visit family in Guatemala or accept a job outside her home. After waiting nearly two years for an October immigration court date in Los Angeles, she now has to wait until August. “Every time I go to that court, I come out broken, in tears,” said Shahian, who has been married for two decades and helps run her husband’s clothing design business.
The courts overseen by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review nearly always have long waits for hearings. As of January, more than 360,000 cases were pending for an average of 573 days, according to TRAC.
Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks said she doesn’t have two weeks open on her calendar in San Francisco’s immigration court for merit hearings until June 2017. And she can’t just bump people with 2014 court dates, because they’ve also been waiting for their day in court.
Some immigration lawyers said the heartache is par for the course in an overburdened system. Similar problems occur when a judge is sick or weather closes a courthouse.
