In this report, we illustrate the costs of the SIJS backlog to directly impacted children, child welfare agencies, as well as to immigration legal providers, immigration agencies and the courts. Lastly, we offer recommendations to end the backlog, including specific federal legislative amendments that could solve the problem and provide permanent protection, as Congress intended, for the tens of thousands of vulnerable immigrant children.

To quantify the harms of the SIJS backlog, we obtained a dataset of nearly 140,000 SIJS applications, as well as 26,000 SIJS-based green card applications, after suing USCIS under the Freedom of Information Act. This is the first time that data on the SIJS backlog has been made available to the public. Our report is based on findings from this data set, analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute, and from first-hand peer interviews of impacted youth conducted by Maria Huerta Rodriguez and Ivonne Silva, our youth researchers, as well as interviews with legal services providers and child welfare agencies across the country.