President Barack Obama last week unveiled his much anticipated proposal to overhaul the U.S. immigration system. Immigration lawyers say his plan — if it survives legal challenges — would likely ease the large backlog of cases in immigration courts.
There were 421,972 cases pending in the nation's 58 immigration courts as of the end of October — an increase of more than 22 percent from around the same time period in 2013, according to data released this week by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Obama plans to use executive actions to expand temporary protections from deportation and update the guidelines that prosecutors use in deciding whether to pursue deportation. Republicans have already pledged to challenge the president's constitutional authority in court. The first suit was filed within hours of the president's Nov. 20 announcement.
