The Trump administration’s tough-on-immigration policies are on pace to reduce the backlog of cases in the nation’s immigration courts, reversing a long-running trend that has raised concerns from lawmakers of both parties.
The number of pending cases in the asylum and deportation system reached an all-time high of 3.7 million cases at the end of fiscal 2024, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, which compiles data on immigration enforcement.
But the number had dropped to 3.4 million, a decrease of about 8 percent, with one month remaining in fiscal 2025, the data shows, the first decline in the backlog since at least 2012. As of March, the average wait time for those in the backlog was 636 days, TRAC reported.
