May 17 (UPI) — The Biden administration announced Thursday a new immigration docket process to more rapidly screen and rule on cases of single adult immigrants seeking admittance to the United States.
The departments of Homeland Security and Justice said the docket process will be launched in the five cities of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City where immigration judges will aim to make final decisions on cases within 180 days.
The new process will allow for judgements, including removal, to be handed down more swiftly, the departments said.
“Today, we are instituting with the Department of Justice a process to accelerate asylum proceedings so that individuals who do not qualify for relief can be removed more quickly and those who do qualify can achieve protection sooner,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
The Biden administration said the new process promotes the efficient, expeditious and fair adjudication of immigration cases with use of the limited resources at their disposal.
President Joe Biden‘s administration has been plagued by a surge in migrants at the southern border during his time in the White House, and it shaping up to be a key issue in the presidential race.
According to the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, there are more than 3.5 million immigration court backlog cases, with 1.3 million new cases recorded so far in this fiscal year, which began in October.
TRAC also states that the last year saw an average 1,016 days from the completion of an immigration court process.
The Biden administration has implemented a series of moves that have contributed to a drop in encounters at the southern border from a record high of more than 300,000 in the month of December, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures. In April there were 179,725 encounters in April which is the lowest amount for that month since 173,277 were tallied in 2021.