Fix sought for immigration backlog

By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The federal government has hired two additional judges and is preparing to appoint two more to Georgia’s immigration courts, hoping to shrink a massive and costly backlog of deportation cases here.

But some court observers doubt whether this will have much effect amid a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration that is filling court dockets.

Judge Dan Trimble started hearing cases in a courtroom at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin late last month. Judge Saundra Arrington took the bench there in October.

That gives the state six immigration judges in all for a pending caseload that reached a whopping 6,601 on Sept. 20, according to records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Fueled by expanded efforts to tackle illegal immigration, the backlog has gotten so deep in Georgia that judges are now scheduling hearings for court cases into 2013.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in September that immigrants suspected of being in the United States illegally are being held in a detention center in an isolated corner of rural southwest Georgia for months at taxpayer expense, and others are remaining free on bond for years here amid a severe backlog in the nation's immigration courts. Federal officials told the AJC in September that they were in the midst of hiring 47 more judges nationwide, including some for Georgia’s courts.

The government is now seeking a third judge to hear cases in Lumpkin, according to local immigration attorneys. And one more judge is in the pipeline to fill a vacancy in the downtown Atlanta court, according to the U.S. Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s 270 immigration judges and 59 courts.

“The increase of the number of immigration judges will help to mitigate ... [the] pending caseload,” EOIR said in a prepared statement issued to the AJC.

But attorneys who handle cases in Georgia’s immigration courts worry the new judges won’t even make a dent in the state’s backlog, partly because federal authorities are expanding efforts to deport illegal immigrants nationwide. For example, a federal fingerprint-sharing program aimed at deporting violent illegal immigrants is scheduled to cover all metro Atlanta jails by the end of September. And that expansion could send many more deportation cases to Georgia’s immigration courts.

“I don’t think it is going to have any impact whatsoever,” Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-area immigration attorney and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said of the newly hired judges. “We probably are four or five judges short here in Atlanta.”

Nationwide, there were 261,083 immigration cases pending as of Sept. 27, according to a study by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization that monitors the federal government. Georgia ranked 11th among states based on its pending caseload.

Atlanta’s immigration court is so flooded with deportation cases that it takes 482 days to resolve one on average, which is up from 450 during the summer, according to the study. Meanwhile, cases for inmates held at the detention center in Lumpkin are pending for 81 days on average, up from 63 in June.

Those in the Atlanta courts could be free on bond while judges are prioritizing those held at the Lumpkin facility.

But some immigrants recently interviewed for this article said they have been held in that detention center for six months or more while fighting deportation.

Corrections Corp. of America, a $1.6 billion business based in Nashville, owns and operates that detention center through an agreement between Stewart County and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Federal taxpayers pay the county $60.50 per inmate per day through that agreement. That works out to $110,231 per day, based on last fiscal year’s average daily inmate population of 1,822. The county, however, keeps only 85 cents per inmate per day for its administrative costs and pays CCA the rest, or $59.65 per inmate per day. Since 2007, the county has collected $1.7 million through this arrangement, county officials said. That represents more than half of the tiny county’s $3 million operating budget.

Without that funding from CCA, the county would be “hurting,” said Joe Lee Williams, chairman of the county’s Board of Commissioners.

“It is a big part of our budget,” Williams said. “We haven’t raised taxes in years here, and that is partly because we got a good private employer in the county.”

Last month, the detention center was nearly full with about 1,900 detainees.

Pedro Guzman, a stay-at-home father from Durham, N.C., was among them. He said he has been held there for more than a year while appealing a judge’s order that he be deported. His wife, Emily, said Pedro’s case has dragged on so long partly because of various court delays. Late last week, he was denied bond, blocking his attempts to reunite with his wife and 4-year-old son, said his attorney, Glenn Fogle.

Guzman’s legal trouble started after his Guatemalan mother illegally brought him over the Mexican border when he was 8 years old as his family was seeking asylum, his wife said. When he grew older, he was able to obtain work visas and stay in the country legally for many years, Emily Guzman said.

But federal officials arrested him last year after the government rejected his mother's request to stay in the country legally and after Pedro Guzman failed to show up at an immigration court hearing, Emily Guzman said. The government, however, had mailed his court hearing notice to the wrong address, his wife said. Pedro Guzman was convicted of two marijuana-related misdemeanors in the late 1990s when he was a teenager, she said. Fogle said one conviction was thrown out, but the other conviction has made his case more difficult.

During a telephone interview from the detention center last month, Pedro Guzman, 30, talked about missing his wife and 4-year-old son, Logan.

“Emotionally, it’s really hard and mentally draining. I don’t see my wife very often,” he said. “For my son, I want to be there. I want to play with him ... I cannot smell him and feel his skin and give him a hug. I wish I could have that time.”