San Diego Detention Facility Gets New Immigration Judges

Two new immigration judges have been appointed to serve at the Otay Mesa Detention Center by the Department of Justice. Both are former Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys, and the appointment doubles the number of such judges working at the center.

The two new judges are Catherine Halliday-Roberts and Olga Attia. Halliday-Roberts has worked as a government attorney for 15 years in immigration courts in Lancaster, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Attia worked as a government attorney for 20 years in the immigration court of San Diego. The pair are part of a group of no less than 11 judges who will begin hearing immigration cases across the US next month.

According to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is the agency within the Department of Justice responsible for hiring immigration judges, the new appointments increase the number of immigration judges in the country to 326. The Office is currently authorized for a total of 374 judges and has been attempting to fill those positions due to the rising number of immigration cases, a backlog that has been a problem for many years and which is steadily worsening.

As of September last year, there were over 518,000 pending cases in immigration courts in the US, 666 of which were at the Otay Mesa Detention Center. There were 3750 pending cases at the immigration court in San Diego, and 3554 at the detention center in Imperial.