The refugee wave that buffeted Germany in 2015 is now crashing down on the nation’s courts, as migrants seeking relief from the Syrian civil war challenge efforts by one of Europe’s most welcoming states to limit their rights.

Some 250,000 asylum appeals are pending across Germany, according to estimates from an association of administrative court judges. Nearly 13,500 are ongoing in the capital alone, part of a tenfold increase over the past year.

Stephan Groscurth, a spokesman for Berlin’s administrative court, said the appeals — filed by the growing number of migrants who have been denied protection or given less than they were seeking — make up two-thirds of court business. “This will paralyze us for years,” a judge told Der Tagesspiegel, a German daily based in Berlin.

The courts are the last bastion of hope for Amira Suleiman, 44. She has not seen her husband or 12-year-old son for two years — not since she fled to Germany from Syria, setting out from the Palestinian refugee camp at Yarmouk, a war-ravaged place in Syria that had once been their home.

Read the whole story from The Washington Post.

Featured image courtesy of AP