Does the U.S. immigration court have a 4-year backlog of more than 3M cases?

The U.S. immigration court system does have a backlog of nearly 3.8 million cases as of the third quarter of 2025. But, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, the average wait time for all cases was about 1.7 years as of earlier this year.

Asylum cases take much longer, however, with the National Immigration Forum reporting in early 2024 an estimated wait time of 4.3 years. There are nearly 2.4 million asylum seekers’ cases pending as of the third quarter of 2025.

The backlog is driven by the high number of applications, especially from people seeking protection from persecution, a shortage of immigration judges and support staff, and frequent policy changes that complicate proceedings. Even with recent efforts to hire judges and create new processing dockets, the system is still overwhelmed.