Allen Orr, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), appeared as a guest on MSNBC, where he discussed immigration court reform and the neverending backlog.
On Sunday, the U.S. deported 120 people to Haitians. Of those 120, nearly half were children and many were toddlers. The Biden administration has continued to deport thousands of Haitians since his inauguration in January 2021.
The country’s immigration service is currently dealing with a record number of backlog cases—more than 1 million.
Orr was asked how the backlog reached more than a million cases.
“Our system isn’t working correctly that we did not do the appropriate things on the infrastructure. Part of that backlog started when we were having analog courts in a digital world,” Orr told Jose Diaz-Balart. “Then we had an administration that broke all the systems. Then we hit the virus and now we are where we are today. And this administration has the power to fix it the same way we do in criminal court.”
Diaz-Balart then questioned how the backlog could be resolved. Orr was ready with a few solutions:
“Well, the first thing you do is you get rid of some of them. And the best way to do that is to get rid of all the ones that are related to marijuana possession. That’s not really that big of an issue anymore. Let’s close those cases. There’s no reason to deport people when in many states it’s legal,” Orr explained.
“Secondly, any case that’s been open for more than five years, which is the jury statute limitation on all federal crimes. Let those individuals go. If you haven’t taken action against them in five years, that’s a regulatory time and a just time to sort of say, ‘we’re not gonna move on those cases anymore.’ So let’s move away from those cases.”
Allen Orr is the founder of Orr Immigration Law Firm PC, a minority-owned law firm based in Washington, DC and focusing on US corporate compliance. Orr has appeared on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), FOX News, and Deutsche Welle (DW), and is a frequent national and international speaker on US immigration and policy.
