New York City ICE office is full for migrant appointments through the end of 2032

The backlog of immigrant appointments at New York City’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices is the worst in the country: New arrivals are told they won’t be seen until October 2032.

There are currently almost 40,000 people on the waiting list, the new york post office reported on Monday. In second and third place after New York are two Florida cities: Jacksonville and Miramar.

Migrants arriving in Jacksonville will have to wait until June 2028 for their appointment, and January 2028 in Miramar.

Fourth worst is San Antonio, with the next available appointment in February 2027, and fifth is Atlanta, which has no space until January 2027. The appointments are for a ‘Notice to Report’.

This is an interim step, which the Biden administration introduced in early 2021 and ended later that year. Previously, immigrants were simply given a ‘Notice to Appear’ in immigration court.

But the immigration courts are equally overwhelmed, with delays there stretching for several years.

New York’s immigration court has approximately 194,000 pending cases and is among the longest delayed in the country. The average case is pending for 840 days as of January, nearly two and a half years, according to data from Syracuse University.

It means that for most of those who hope to be able to work and send money to their families, the only option is to do so illegally, without work authorization.

Víctor Rodríguez, 23, who arrived in the US from Venezuela in late 2022, told The Post that he has an appointment in 2025. He said: ‘Before I came, I knew it was going to be complicated, but I didn’t so much.

‘I didn’t know it would take so long.’

He currently lives in the New York Manhattan Hotel near the Empire State Building. Rodriguez said he thought about moving to another state with a shorter wait time, but then decided to “wait.”

Buses carrying migrants are seen arriving in New York City in December 2022.

A man is detained by an ICE officer in Manhattan

ICE agents are seen processing paperwork for undocumented immigrants in New York

Jhony Amagua, 28, from Ecuador, arrived in late January and told The Post that he has been given an appointment for 2031.

He told the newspaper that he, his wife and their two children were “completely lost”, adding that he “has no idea what to do”.

Matt O’Brien, a former immigration judge in Virginia, who worked from 2020 to 2022 after a career with Citizenship and Immigration Services, said most who use the system will ultimately be denied asylum.

“The main problem with all of this is that 99% of these people don’t have a valid asylum claim,” he told The Post.

‘[The asylum process] it is designed to protect people from persecution, primarily at the hands of a government or, in certain limited circumstances, at the hands of parties the government cannot or will not control.’

New York City has had trouble coping with the decision by the governors of Texas and Arizona to send immigrants north to the Democratic-ruled state.

Hundreds of migrants stormed the Paso del Norte crossing in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on Sunday with the intention of crossing into El Paso.

Migrants and police clash on Sunday on the bridge between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Texas.

Migrants, mostly from Venezuela, try to cross the barrier of the Mexican army into the United States this Sunday

Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, sent 4,900 migrants to New York City between August 5 and December 29.

Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, in turn, has been handing out free bus tickets to allow migrants to travel north to the Canadian border, where they are then left on their own.

ICE said in a statement that it was “working to address current processing delays at some field offices.”

ICE’s New York City office of Deportation and Enforcement Operations “has the capacity to serve approximately 400 to 600 non-citizens per day on average, depending on the complexity of each case,” the agency said.