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Immigration court backlog keeps asylum seekers in limbo
People who come to the U.S. seeking asylum from persecution are struggling while their cases stall in the backlogged dockets of the nation's immigration courts.
As a result of heightened immigration enforcement in the past several years, the courts have shifted their resources to deal with people in immigration detention facilities. Combined with a shortage in judges, that has meant longer wait times for all types of immigration cases to be resolved.
For asylum seekers, longer waits can mean spending months or years in detention. For those not in custody, the delays can leave them in a state of limbo, allowed to live in the country legally but not to work or access social services while they wait to plead their case in front of a judge.
Sa'youh Tunji, 28, from Cameroon, who now lives in Maryland, spent more than five years waiting for his day in court.
"I went from trouble back home to more trouble," he said.
Tunji fled Cameroon in 2003 after his father was killed–by government forces, Tunji thinks. His father had been a political activist with the Southern Cameroons National Council, a group that advocates for independence of English-speaking Southern Cameroon from the French-speaking majority. Tunji recalled police harassing the family when he was a child, raiding their house and taking him into custody to question him about his father. As a university student, he became an SCNC activist and was arrested twice for his own political activities. He described being beaten and tortured in police custody.