“Border crossings is a big part of the recent growth,” said Kocher, but he added that historically, most of the cases now in the queue accumulated under prior presidents, especially Trump, whose immigration policies exacerbated the backlog.

“It’s not as if the core backlog is growing at a steady rate, it’s actually accelerating,” said Syracuse University researcher Austin Kocher, who said the crush of cases will likely reach 2 million by the end of 2022.

“The immigration courts may actually be entering a new concerning era where it’s not like, we can just hire some more judges and try to keep up with the incoming cases, it’s almost like it’s getting to a tipping point where there may be no simple or easy kind of solution in sight,” Kocher said.