A new full-time immigration judge has been added to the Salt Lake City bench, a small practical fix for a court still shouldering tens of thousands of unresolved cases. For many people with cases in Utah, that single hire will only matter if it actually speeds hearings instead of just reshuffling an already clogged calendar.
The Salt Lake City Immigration Court is now staffed by four judges after a tumultuous year that saw three judges depart and a patchwork of temporary judges fill in, some drawn from military legal backgrounds. “Judges’ calendars are nearly full through 2029,” immigration attorney Adam Crayk told KUER, a detail that sums up just how little breathing room is left between stacked dockets.
Backlog by the numbers
As of March, roughly 49,192 cases were pending in the Salt Lake City docket, and the average case there had been unresolved for about 752 days, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Those figures place Salt Lake City among the longer-waiting immigration courts and help explain why many hearing dates are now scheduled years into the future.
How long to clear the queue?
Two judges in Salt Lake City were finishing about 202 and 228 cases per month, and at that pace, analysts estimate it would take roughly 9.6 years to clear the existing backlog. KUER reports that adding a third judge at the same average rate would cut that timeline to about 6.4 years. That is an important gain, but still a long road for respondents waiting for decisions that will shape the rest of their lives.
National shake-up reshapes the bench
The staffing crunch in Utah comes as the federal immigration bench has been remade nationwide. Union and national reporting show more than 113 immigration judges have been dismissed during the past year while the department has been recruiting replacements. ABC News reported on the recent terminations, and outlets such as The Guardian note the Justice Department has been hiring scores of new permanent and temporary judges. The department’s recruiting site even promotes openings under a “You Be The Judge” banner that calls the role a “deportation judge.”
Legal context
A March 2026 Merit Systems Protection Board ruling narrowed removal protections for some in-house judges, a shift that government watchers say has reshaped personnel decisions at the agency. Reporting in Government Executive and other legal outlets describes how that ruling, and the appeals it prompted, could affect judicial independence and how comfortably judges handle complex cases under pressure.
For Utah immigrants awaiting hearings, the new judge is a step, but not a solution. Clearing a backlog measured in tens of thousands of cases will require sustained hiring, training for new judges, and operational changes to scheduling and case management. Until that happens, many will still face multi-year waits for the hearings that decide whether they can stay in the country.
