Judging the Judges in Immigration Court

by Jason Dzubow

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, Immigration Court is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. Also, some of the chocolate is poison.

For many applicants in Immigration Court, the most important factor in determining success is not the person’s story or the evidence or the quality of their lawyer. It is the judge who is randomly assigned to the case. According to TRAC Immigration, a non-profit that tracks asylum approval rates in Immigration Court, Immigration Judge (“IJ”) approval rates vary widely. For the period 2017 to 2022, asylum approval rates ranged from 0% (a judge in Houston) to 99% (a judge in San Francisco). Of the 635 IJs listed on the TRAC web page, 125 granted asylum in less than 10% of their cases. At the other extreme, nine IJs granted asylum more than 90% of the time.

Based solely on these numbers, there is a 20% chance (1 in 5) that your IJ denies at least 90% of the asylum cases that he adjudicates. That’s pretty frightening. But there is much more to the story, which we will explore below. (more…)

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New USCIS Report Highlights Progress and Challenges

by Jason Dzubow

USCIS recently issued its Fiscal Year 2022 report (covering the period from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022). The report discusses USCIS’s efforts to dig itself out of the hole created by the pandemic and the prior Administration, and sets forth plans for the current fiscal year.

There were some positive developments during FY2022 and most of these relate to the immigration agency’s efforts to reduce its various backlogs (though this report does not discuss the asylum backlog) and to address humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine. These developments were made possible with the help of Congress, which appropriated additional funds for USCIS’s mission (USCIS normally receives more than 95% of its funding from customer fees). The agency notes that for FY2023, “Continued congressional support is critical to eliminate current net backlogs and achieve a robust humanitarian mission, while a new fee rule will help prevent the accumulation of additional backlogs in the future.” (more…)

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Withdrawing Your Asylum Case

by Jason Dzubow

If you are reading this blog (which presumably, you are), you already know about the massive delays at our nation’s Asylum Offices. There are currently about 543,000 pending cases, and some applicants have been waiting for an interview for six, seven, eight years or longer. Given that life happens during this long wait, applicants sometimes want to withdraw their application for asylum. In this post, we’ll talk about when it might be appropriate to withdraw a case and how to do that. (more…)

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