Steven Schulman Op-Ed on “Broken” Immigration System Published by Law360
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“The Most Broken Part of our Immigration System,” an opinion piece by Akin Gump pro bono partner Steven Schulman has been published by Law360.
Schulman, whose practice includes a substantial focus on immigration and asylum matters, discusses the variety of ways in which the U.S. immigration system is flawed, then focuses his attention on what he considers the “most broken part” of the immigration system: “[I]mmigration courts cannot come close to handling the burdens placed upon them. This is not simply justice delayed leading to justice denied: it is a crisis of conscience, a matter of humanity, and a moment of threatening consequence.”
Citing a statistic of more than 430,000 individuals awaiting hearings in administrative immigration courts around the country, he notes that many will wait an average of 14 months, but that many will also wait up to four years to be heard.
Schulman posits that the reason for these delays is that “the cases are coming faster than they can be completed…. The rate at which cases piled up was even greater, going from 408,000 [in FY 2014] to more than 456,000. But over the last 15 years, the number of immigration court judges has declined dramatically, creating a chronic backlog that has resulted in these delays.”
To read the full article, please click here.
