PROVO, Utah — The Kohistani brothers came from Afghanistan in 2023 and are seeking asylum in the U.S. But an Ogden immigration attorney not connected to their case says the chance of them being granted asylum here is greatly diminished because of a policy where asylum seekers are being diverted to third-party countries.
"There's that big national case about the man from El Salvador, the Abrego case. The government, they're trying to remove him to Uganda using one of these agreements, but now they're trying to do it for everyone, not just him, but all the cases, all the everyone's seeking asylum in the asylum court. If they came here since 2019, they're subject to one of these agreements," Jonathan Bachison said.
I spoke with Bachison this afternoon in a Zoom interview. He does a lot of immigration cases but hasn't won an asylum case since August of last year. He says a lot of people have legitimate, winnable cases but are being ordered to seek asylum in a different country after coming here and faithfully going through the process.
When asked how overwhelmed the immigration court system is in Utah, Bachison painted a stark picture.
"Very, in Utah it's extreme. The last year we had 5 immigration judges and now we're down to 2, and there's maybe 50,000 cases for two judges. It's an impossible overload," Bachison said.
Bachison says it was announced today that Utah will get another judge, so there will be three judges for those 50,000 cases. He says when the "DOGE" cutbacks happened last year, it severely hampered the immigration court.
He says maybe, instead of the government giving so much money to ICE, it could give more to the immigration court system to deal with the backlog of cases that sit for years without a hearing.
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