ImmigrationServer outages continue to hobble immigration courts’ work
The servers of the U.S. Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)support the fifty-nine immigration courts administered by the EOIR,the electronic registry for accredited immigration attorneys and representatives, and the 260-plus immigration court judges and staff. For the last six weeks, these servers have suffered from severe outages, hobbling the work of the immigration courts. During the six week period, about 366,724 cases were pending, butcourt clerks were unable to access court records, enter new records in the system, and make digital recordings of hearings.
For six weeks, the computer system which supports the U.S. Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)-administered courts was affected by a server outage. The New York Post reported that five servers located in Falls Church, Virginia had a technical meltdown. The servers support the fifty-nine immigration courts administered by the EOIR, the electronic registry for accredited immigration attorneys and representatives, and the 260-plus immigration court judges and staff. As a result of the outage, court staff had to rely on manual methods for recording and tracking immigration cases.
According to IEEE Spectrum, since the electronic systems were down, court clerks were unable to access court records, enter new records in the system, and make digital recordings of hearings. Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told the Las Vegas Sun, “like everything these days, more and more things are inter-connected. To open up the court docketing system about a certain case, first it has to be scheduled and then I can pull up the part that allows me to record it. The phone hotline is connected to the system too, and so it hasn’t updated since things went down a month a ago. That’s why it’s been so debilitating.”
The telephone hotline allows those waiting in detention centers without computer access to check the status of their cases.
On 19 May 2014, the EOIR released a statement noting that its data recovery team has been able to recover post-server malfunction data. Electronic databases are now functioning, though the telephone hotline is limited to providing only information recorded in the electronic database, as court staff will need several weeks to update case information obtained manually. During the six week period, about 366,724 cases were pending and the issue has drawn attention to a court system advocates consider to be underfunded.
Politico notes that Attorney General Eric Holder refused to comment on the status of the server meltdown, but he did note the need for Congress to allocate more funds in order to prevent similar problems from reoccurring. “This is kind of the tip of the iceberg,” Marks said of the current breakdown. “If this isn’t a wake-up call for getting off the dime for Congress to work together, I don’t know what is. How embarrassing and ludicrous for a court system to be in this position for so long.”
