Texas Border Crisis Sees Immigration Court Backlog Hit Over 450,000

As Texas grapples with skyrocketing numbers of migrants at its borders, new figures show the scale of the problem in its immigration courts, which have become bogged down in a huge backlog of cases.

The figures, which come from federal data collated by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (an independent body monitoring the federal government), will make for grim reading in Texas as the state struggles with surging numbers of migrants crossing into the U.S. at its southern border with Mexico.

The backlog of cases clogging up the U.S. court system has soared to more than 3 million across the country in the past year, with some 458,630 in Texas alone. The numbers have seen a significant jump since 2012, when just 40,051 immigration cases were pending in the state.

It is likely to provide little more than cold comfort for Texans to learn that the backlog is even higher in Florida. The Sunshine State has 481,376 cases outstanding, a huge spike compared to 2012 when just 17,645 cases were pending, according to the data.

The stark numbers mean that Florida is dealing with the biggest backlog in the U.S., with Texas coming in second place in a race no one wants to win. The other three states making up the top five regions in terms of pending immigration applications are California (348,138 cases), New York (344,505) and Illinois (211,096).

In April 2022, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott vowed to bus migrants entering Texas to Washington, D.C., so the Biden administration could deal with them. But still more migrants came and, in December of that year, one of the largest mass crossings was caught on camera when a caravan of more than 1,000 migrants filed into the U.S. at El Paso, Texas. That group was mostly made up of people from Nicaragua, Peru or Ecuador, but increasing numbers of Chinese migrants are also arriving at the southern border.

This month, governors from other Republican-led states sent troops to Texas to help police the border amid claims the situation could escalate toward "a civil war."

A number of factors are likely to have contributed to the vast backlog in immigration cases, including the soaring number of applications as migrants feel compelled to flee violence or poverty in their own countries, a controversial end to the COVID-era Title 42 policy that limited the numbers of asylum claims, delays in the court system caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and rollover appeals stemming from cases heard in previous years.

The shortfall in the federal immigration budget also hit the ability of officials to deal with cases—such as permanent resident petitions and work permits—in a timely manner.

The backlog of cases includes asylum-seekers who are fleeing persecution in their homelands, as well as immigrants who have been living in the U.S. on temporary visas for years as they seek permanent residency.

Newsweek has reached to representatives of Abbott and the White House by email for comment.