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New Data Shows More and More of Virginia's Population is in Deportation Proceedings

Across Virginia, a rapidly growing number of people are in deportation proceedings.

Virginia has the fourth-highest proportion of its population in deportation proceedings. That's according to newly released data from immigrant courts collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Susan Long at Syracuse University is the co-founder and co-director of the research center.

"The backlog has just been going up and up and up, and it rose two and a half times during the Trump administration," Long explains. "So there was just this huge, huge ballooning."

Huge backlog of cases. Not enough judges. Court dates scheduled years into the future. And local governments handing over undocumented immigrants to federal immigration officials.

"Throughout Virginia, there are jurisdictions that are really sort of feeding their own immigrant residents into the maw of the deportation regime," says Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg at the Legal Aid Justice Center.

"People in that court can expect their cases to be pending for three, four, five, sometimes even six years," Sandoval-Moshenberg explains. "So, large numbers of people having gone into proceedings, small numbers of people coming out of deportation proceedings equals a huge number of state and county residents in pending deportation proceedings."

In some parts of Virginia most of those undocumented immigrants are appearing in court without legal representation.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

Michael Pope is an author and journalist who lives in Old Town Alexandria.