Title 42: Immigration Court Backlog Now 4.5 Years on Average
The Rich Zeoli Show
Audacy
4.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
James Varney—Writer at RealClearInvestigations—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss his most recent story, “Court Backlog Clog: It’s the Story of Immigration Now and It’s Growing Inexorably Worse.” Varney writes: “The average wait time for a ‘Notice to Appear’ before a judge at one of the nation’s 66 immigration courts is now four and a half years. In some cities it is much longer. In New York City, new migrants do not have to appear in court until 2032.” Locally, the backlog in Mount Laurel, New Jersey is over 4,000—with no new court dates for migrants until May of 2026, according to estimations. You can read the full article here: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/05/15/the_backlog_clog_its_the_story_of_immigration_now_and_its_growing_inexorably_worse_899422.html
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the only show on your schedule from talk radio 1210 WPHD in the Free Odyssey app. |
| 0:07.2 | All right, it's Friday afternoon, busy week, uh, flown by, can't believe it, I can't |
| 0:12.8 | believe it's 3530, ish, 537. Wow, 855, 839, 1210, thanks for being here. Uh, real |
| 0:19.3 | clear investigations, part of real clear politics, they do some great work over there. James |
| 0:23.8 | Varney is a writer at real clear investigations and he joins me now on this Friday. James, how |
| 0:28.9 | are you? I'm fine, Rich. How are you doing? Great. Great to have you back on the show. |
| 0:33.5 | Um, I read your piece and I'm amazed by it too. You know, people talk about immigration, |
| 0:38.2 | they talk about this and everything that's happening. But I, you know, some, you don't realize |
| 0:42.1 | just how bad the situation is and your piece court backlog clog. It's the story of immigration |
| 0:49.5 | now and it's growing inexorably worse. So what made you want to write this story? First |
| 0:54.6 | of all, well, one of the things was it, it, it seems as if so many elements of our immigration |
| 1:01.6 | policies are, are broken or, aren't working at least as they are intended or designed to do. |
| 1:08.2 | And so one of the things that, that we had done before was spend some time in immigration |
| 1:12.4 | court and now we looked and saw that the, the time in some of these places in New York City |
| 1:18.0 | in particular was a decade in the future that the date that illegal immigrants were being given |
| 1:24.2 | noticed to appear when they come into the country. And it seemed that there's a perfect example |
| 1:30.0 | of, of how the system seems to be stretched to the breaking point. And when we talked to the |
| 1:35.6 | number of experts who looked at it, they said, well, we're past that. It is broken. It's shattered. |
| 1:41.7 | I have a friend who's an immigration attorney in Philadelphia, Christine Flour. She's a dear friend |
| 1:45.9 | of mine. Um, she said this before to me. I mean, she's talked about this and, but, you know, to hear |
| 1:51.2 | that the system is shattered according to several former judges as you find out. So what's the |
| 1:56.0 | average wait time for a notice to appear before a judge? And there's 66 immigration courts. |
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