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Detained Immigrants Could Wait 19 Months For Their Day In Honolulu Court
DHS is shortening asylum hearings and seeking more early removals as the national immigration case backlog falls to 3.3 million, officials said.
- Honolulu Immigration Court's pending cases reached 1,413 in March 2026, a 15-year high, with average wait times surging to 19 months.
- The Department of Homeland Security implemented policies to shrink backlogs by limiting individual hearing times and increasing pretermission motions, where judges dismiss claims before full hearings.
- Maui attorney Kevin Block warned that capping hearings at two hours forces rushed proceedings, stating "Jamming it into a two-hour slot just feels like you're rushing through due process."
- Nationally, DHS issued 48,000 pretermission motions in March, double the figure from March 2025, reducing the national backlog from 3.7 million to 3.3 million.
- Structural constraints compound the crisis: immigration judges nationwide declined from 735 to 557 last year, while Honolulu's detention center population surged from 15 to 73 per day.
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Associated Press News+10 Reposted by 10 other sources
Detained Immigrants Could Wait 19 Months For Their Day In Honolulu Court
Honolulu’s federal immigration court has become increasingly overwhelmed since 2020, with new data showing that the number of cases pending and the wait time for those cases to reach the courts both have hit their highest levels in 15 years.
·United States
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Total News Sources11
Leaning Left5Leaning Right0Center5Last UpdatedBias Distribution50% Left, 50% Center
Bias Distribution
- 50% of the sources lean Left, 50% of the sources are Center
50% Center
L 50%
C 50%
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