Immigration Court Overload

By Jerry Kammer and Jerry Kammer on March 25, 2011

The big story on last night's Univision newscasts was the census report that the Latino population has grown by 43 percent over the last decade and now totals 50 million.

While the demographic shift is big news across the country, Univision also covered a related story that has not received much play – the crushing workload of the nation's 270 immigration judges, whose courts are clogged with 350,000 cases per year.

Dana Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, offered a glimpse of what that means at the local level.

"In Los Angeles, each judge has about 2,500 matters pending," she said. "In Chicago, it's about 3,000."

"It is work load that can't be sustained for very long," said Marks.

Univision relegated to its late edition a story about John McCain's visit to the Arizona border towns of Douglas, Nogales, and Yuma.

McCain, accompanied by Rep. Jeff Flake, a contender for Arizona's other Senate seat in 2012, pledged that "after the border is secure and we can assure our citizens of that, we will be fully prepared to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform."