Why New Mexico's court system is overwhelmed

Three of New Mexico's seven federal district judgeships are vacant, and that's causing a lot of issues for the state's courts and those awaiting their cases, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The court system in New Mexico was reportedly already in danger of being overwhelmed before the Trump administration ramped up its efforts to curb illegal immigration at the U.S.'s southern border. But now hundreds of migrants facing charges of entering the U.S. illegally are crowding into courtrooms in New Mexico every day. That means many of the migrants are having their cases heard in just a matter of minutes, as the courts simply don't have the capacity to handle the situation as it stands, especially considering judges also have to attend to non-border related cases.

The average amount of felony cases per judge in New Mexico was 983 between June 2018 and June 2019, whereas the national average was 125 cases per judge. A number of judges from outside of New Mexico have been called in to the state to lend a hand. "It's not an unusual day in New Mexico where I am doing 30 to 40 sentencings, when I might not do 30 sentencings in a year in Kansas," said Senior Judge J. Thomas Marten, who normally sits in Wichita, Kansas, but spends a few weeks in New Mexico every year.

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The situation is also reportedly leading to longer stays in jail for some migrants as they await their hearings. One nominee to the New Mexico bench is waiting for a confirmation vote in the Senate, and another is being vetted by New Mexico's Democratic senators, Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, who are still interviewing candidates for the third vacancy. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.