In the News: More Immigrants Are Waiting in Legal Limbo Than Ever Before. Why Is It So Hard to Fix the Backlog in the Courts?
For years, under multiple presidents of both parties, the immigration court system has been something of a mess, struggling with a huge backlog of cases that has just seemed to snowball and snowball, sometimes keeping individuals in legal limbo for several years.
Changes in immigration law "happen constantly and sometimes without warning," Nowel told [the reporter]. Someone may be preparing their case for years but is now no longer eligible. "We saw this a lot during the previous administration, if their case had happened sooner they may have been approved, but now all of the sudden they’re going to be denied." But at this point, they've already sometimes waited years in the system.