A Border Patrol agent died in 2009. His widow is still fighting a backlogged US program for benefits

When her husband died after a grueling U.S. Border Patrol training program for new agents, Lisa Afolayan applied for the federal benefits promised to families of first responders whose lives are cut short in the line of duty.

Sixteen years later, Afolayan and her two daughters haven’t seen a penny, and program officials are defending their decisions to deny them compensation. She calls it a nightmare that too many grieving families experience.

“It just makes me so mad that we are having to fight this so hard,” said Afolayan, whose husband, Nate, had been hired to guard the U.S. border with Mexico in southern California. “It takes a toll emotionally, and I don’t think they care. To them, it’s just a business. They’re just pushing paper.”

Afolayan’s case is part of a backlog of claims plaguing the fast-growing Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program. Hundreds of families of deceased and disabled officers are waiting years to learn whether they qualify for the life-changing payments, and more are ultimately being denied, an Associated Press analysis of program data found.

The program is falling far short of its goal of deciding claims within one year. Nearly 900 have been pending for longer than that, triple the number from five years earlier, in a backlog that includes cases from nearly every state, according to AP’s review, which was based on program data through late April.

More than 120 of those claims have been in limbo for at least five years, and roughly a dozen have languished for a decade.

“That is just outrageous that the person has to wait that long,” said Charlie Lauer, the program’s general counsel in the 1980s. “Those poor families.”

Justice Department officials, who oversee the program, acknowledge the backlog. They say they’re managing a surge in claims — which have more than doubled in the last five years — while making complicated decisions about whether cases meet legal criteria.

In a statement, they said “claims involving complex medical and causation issues, voluminous evidence and conflicting medical opinions take longer to determine, as do claims in various stages of appeal.” It acknowledged a few cases “continue through the process over ten years.”

Program officials wouldn’t comment on Afolayan’s case. Federal lawyers are asking an appeals court for a second time to uphold their denials, which blame Nate’s heat- and exertion-related death on a genetic condition shared by millions of mostly Black U.S. citizens.

Supporters say Lisa Afolayan’s resilience in pursuing the claim has been remarkable, and grown in significance as training-related deaths like Nate’s have risen.

“Your death must fit in their box, or your family’s not going to be taken care of,” said Afolayan, of suburban Dallas.

Their daughter, Natalee, was 3 when her father died. She recently completed her first year at the University of Texas, without the help of the higher education benefits the program provides.

The officers’ benefits program is decades old and has paid billions