EOIR: How We Got Here
The backlog of immigration cases pending before judges nationally is currently hovering at around 500,000. In Houston, Texas alone that number is around 40,000. There are enough reasons to go around for those high tallies, including a lack of resources, an inefficient bureaucracy, and understaffed positions. It also doesn’t help, though, that Immigration Judges like Mimi Schooley Yam were exacerbating each one of these shortcomings. Houston faces the third largest backlog of immigration cases in the country after Los Angeles and New York. The metropolis sits near the Mexican border, so it stands to reason that it would face a high volume of