Asylum Philadelphia: A look at the overburdened Philadelphia Immigration Court

IN JUNE 2006, men in military clothes grabbed Maria, kidnapping her as she slept in a church shelter in Angola, bound and blindfolded her and dragged her away. They beat and raped her, and interrogated her about her boyfriend's human-rights work. Maria eventually escaped to the United States, where she sought asylum. But more than four years went by before a judge in Philadelphia heard her testimony.

Separately in Philadelphia, "Esther," from Ghana, overstayed her tourist visa, fell in love with a naturalized U.S. citizen and married him in 2006. Then he turned abusive. "Esther" wants to stay here, and her attorney says that federal law permits it. But a backlog caused her hearing to be put off until Feb. 1, 2012, and now the matter appears headed out of the judicial system altogether.

These two cases provide a glimpse into the highly emotional issues often brought before the overburdened Philadelphia Immigration Court, where applicants can remain in limbo for years and where the number of cases pending before just three judges skyrocketed to 4,573 in fiscal year 2010 - a 20 percent increase from the previous year.

It was the court's highest number of pending cases since at least 1998, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data-research center at Syracuse University - and possibly its highest number ever.

And it's not just traumatic for applicants. The judges themselves, because of the number and nature of the cases, "suffer from significant symptoms of secondary traumatic stress and more burnout" than prison wardens or physicians, according to a nationwide survey by the University of California, San Francisco.

Last month, immigration lawyer Steven Morley was added to the Philadelphia court as its fourth judge, and he is to begin hearing cases Tuesday. The judges aren't allowed to discuss their work, but observers wonder whether the extra staffing will be enough to bear the burden triggered in large part by the Department of Homeland Security.

"I'm not even sure the fourth judge is going to make much of a difference, because enforcement [by Homeland Security] is cranking up, is still running full-tilt," said James Orlow, a veteran immigration lawyer in Philadelphia and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.