In May, 2005 immigrants fighting to stay in the United States were flooding the federal appellate courts with cases, creating huge backlogs and fundamentally changing the character of the second-highest courts in the nation. Bearing the brunt of this sudden surge was the San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In the year ending June 30, 2001, the immigration caseload was 965. The 9th Circuit is the nation's largest federal appellate court and has long had a liberal reputation, but its immigration caseload is largely driven by the region it serves: California, eight other states and two territories. The court's 24 judges consider myriad cases that must now compete with the ever-growing immigration backlog.

The cases inundating the circuit courts are coming from the Board of Immigration Appeals, a quasi-judicial body appointed by the U.S. attorney general. The caseload now clogging the federal courts was, in large part, an unintended consequence of attempts to ease a backlog at the BIA, which had 57,200 cases pending in 2002. That year, then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft issued policies intended to clear the logjam, saying the backlog "gravely undermines the enforcement of our country's immigration laws."

To speed up the process for certain cases, Ashcroft directed the BIA to either approve cases or send them back to immigration courts outright. The officials, who responded to questions in writing, added that the reforms also hastened the deportation of illegal immigrants, "some of whom posed a threat to our nation." Critics said the BIA reforms have hobbled the agency and eroded an important level of review for immigration cases.

Jurists, legal scholars and immigration lawyers interviewed argued that the BIA reforms have come at the expense of the nation's circuit courts. Ashcroft's successor, Alberto R. Gonzales, acknowledged that immigration cases were beginning to bog down the federal judiciary.

Gonzales urged Congress to propose legislation to address the problem — a remark that prompted a rebuke from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

In a written statement, Leahy said the problem was caused by Ashcroft's "misguided restructuring of the Board of Immigration Appeals."

One result of the changes, according to circuit court officials, is a new role for the appellate courts. The BIA's reliance on one-sentence opinions has forced circuit courts to spend more time researching and deliberating the immigration cases that come to them, court officials say.

"The BIA used to set forth reasoning as to why they affirmed the immigration judge," said Catterson, the 9th Circuit clerk. "Now if they affirm, you often don't know what the grounds are. Basically, the appeals courts now have to serve in the role of the BIA."

That practice has laid bare the deficiencies of immigration courts, where overloaded administrative law judges often serve as their own clerks — recording their own hearings, doing their own research and often ruling from the bench.

"Immigration judges have begun to look really bad in the circuit court decisions because the BIA used to review things. We were encouraged to do things in a short-and-dirty manner, knowing that the BIA would return them if we went too far," said San Francisco-based Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president of the 220-member immigration judges union.

"Now, the BIA is issuing all of these affirmances without opinion and we have no resources to do a top-notch job from the beginning," Marks said. "We're like the guy behind the curtain in 'The Wizard of Oz,' for God's sake."

Several circuit courts have departed from their usual decorum to blast the BIA for failing to explain decisions or correct mistakes by immigration judges.

A ruling by a 9th Circuit three-judge panel in March had this to say about a BIA ruling involving a man who claimed he fled ethnic persecution in Guatemala: "When the agency's only explanation of its final action is incoherent, we may not substantively review it without violating basic principles of judicial review."

At a conference attended by federal appellate judges, BIA members and other immigration law officials last year, Hawkins, of the 9th Circuit, suggested that judges in his court had become so frustrated with the poor quality of many immigration judge decisions that they had considered shaming them into better practice.

"The largest applause line I got the entire time I spoke was when I said our circuit was considering identifying [poor performing] immigration judges by name in our opinions," Hawkins recalled.

Circuit court and immigration judges interviewed estimated that the appeals courts are now reversing a greater proportion of cases than before the BIA restructuring, although statistics on the issue have not been compiled.

"The conventional wisdom is that the elimination of one level of review has resulted in more remands," said Mary Schroeder, chief justice of the 9th Circuit.

The BIA, however, is cutting back on its workload.

That 57,200-case backlog faced by the BIA a few years ago was reduced, as of March, to 32,100. It's a workload the agency views as manageable.