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After the shutdown, it's hurry up and wait in LA's immigration court
A crowd lines up to get into the immigration court on Olive Street in downtown Los Angeles in Oct. 2018.
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Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC
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After the shutdown, it's hurry up and wait in LA's immigration court
The Trump administration has said for some time that it wants to reduce immigration court backlogs and speed up deportation cases. But the recent government shutdown has had the opposite effect, with tens of thousands of hearings canceled and start-up glitches as courts reopened.
Immigrants whose hearings were canceled are expected to receive notices in the mail with a new date to appear. It's not clear how far out they'll be rescheduled. Immigration courts are already heavily backlogged, with more then 800,000 pending cases nationwide.
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