HOUSTON (AP) — People scheduled for hearings at an immigration court in Houston should be prepared to wait more than a year due to nearly 17,000 pending cases and a shortage of judges. The Houston Chronicle (http://bit.ly/1e5sihX ) reported Monday that the October government shutdown also delayed hearings in the court that's under the Department of Justice. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University reports the four judges assigned to Houston's downtown immigration court had 16,647 pending cases in November.