Thousands of illegal immigrants will remain in the United States for at least five more years after the Justice Department moved their deportation hearings to 2019–at the earliest.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice “has begun sending out notices to thousands of immigrants awaiting hearings that their cases will be pushed back nearly five years,” and “began notifying employees in the immigration court system last week that nonpriority cases were being bumped off the court docket and would get a Nov. 29, 2019, court date, which happens to be Black Friday.”
The Journal notes that the 2019 date is “more of a bureaucratic placeholder than an actual plan to hear a flood of cases that day,” which means the hearings could be moved to an even later date in the future.
“Thousands” if not “tens of thousands” illegal immigrants who are “nonpriority cases” and are “living freely” in the United States will reportedly have their hearings delayed.
Immigration courts are backlogged, and the delays will reportedly make “room for higher-priority cases caused last summer by a surge in unaccompanied minors and families crossing the border with Mexico.”
But illegal immigrants, especially those who have recently arrived, who have received “notices to appear,” which have often been mistaken for “permisos” to remain indefinitely in the United States, have had a notorious no-show rate.
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