On the recordJune 2, 2015
I want to thank the ranking member for yielding, number one. Number two, I want to thank him for the steady leadership he has provided as the ranking member. I also want to thank my good friend from Texas, John Culberson. We go back to the State legislature. I thank him for his leadership on this one particular issue that I want to bring up today, and that is the work that we are doing together in adding 55 new immigration judges--the largest amount of immigration judges that we are going to have at one time. So I want to thank him for working together to add that money, as well as the accountability for those judges. We have got to make sure that we not only have the judges, but we have got to make sure that they move those cases with all due process given to everybody--and to move them as soon as possible. I also thank him for the work that we have done on Stone Garden and other border law enforcement needs. Why do we need those new judges? Because right now there are more than 450,000 pending cases. There is a large backlog of immigration cases. There are about 250 judges right now, with about 58 courtrooms across the Nation, but we need to do more. If you look at the casework of an immigration judge, that person will handle about 2,100 cases. If you look at a Federal judge, that judge will handle about 440 cases. You can see the large amount of cases that we have.…
