As a Los Angeles Times story detailed last week, the Trump administration's October 2017 vow to use a "comprehensive strategy" to reduce by 2020 the backlog of immigration cases involving migrants already in the U.S. isn't working. While the number of immigration judges hearing cases has gone from 338 when the promise was made to 414 by the end of 2018, the number of unheard cases went from about 656,000 to about 830,000 over the same span.
This has had the effect of increasing the average time spent in the U.S. by hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants by a month _ to nearly 750 days. That's the sort of statistic that President Donald Trump normally holds up for scorn. This increase happened even though official documents show the administration cynically pressuring immigration judges to speed up reviews.
This backdrop shows why Trump's immigration crackdown seems more a calculated play to win favor with his base than a fine-tuned plan to respond to evolving immigration patterns. The failure to speed up immigration hearings despite promises is just like the failure to improve recruitment of Border Patrol and ICE agents despite promises.
Mr. President: Building a better system is what matters most.
