The Asylumist

My associate Ruth Dickey continues her review of data from our cases filed at the Arlington Asylum Office. She reports her findings here:

One of the biggest sources of client frustration is delay after the asylum interview. Clients are often separated from family members who remain in danger. They feel as though the future is uncertain, and they see no end in sight to their ordeal. The lack of a final decision is stressful and depressing.

Attorneys also face stress and extra work due to delayed decisions. For example, we repeatedly contact the Asylum Office about our clients’ cases, we answer client questions, and we renew employment authorization documents. We have resisted charging more money for this extra work, but it makes operating a business very difficult. Also, we have almost no power to make the decisions arrive faster, and so we feel the stress of our clients’ frustration without being able to do much about it.

Looking at data from 136 of our cases—filed in 2013 and 2014 in the Arlington, Virginia Asylum Office—we can see that about one-third of the cases have been interviewed but are still awaiting decisions. The charts below compare cases filed in 2013 with cases filed in 2014:

The Arlington Asylum Office is working through cases filed in 2013. But unfortunately, it is moving very slowly—we currently have no cases scheduled for interviews in Arlington.

The Asylum Office generally has a goal of issuing its decision two weeks after the interview takes place. Our data shows that they usually do not meet this goal. Of our interviewed cases, only about 1-in-5 applicants received a decision within two weeks of the interview:

For clients who have been interviewed and have received decisions, wait times vary widely. The median wait time for 2013 and 2014 cases was 34 days – but ranged up to 719 days (and keep in mind that this does not include data from people who have been interviewed and who are currently waiting for a decision). The following chart shows the wait time until a decision was made, by interview date:

Of course, dozens of our clients have not gotten decisions yet, and so we do not know how long they will ultimately wait.

As the next chart shows, we currently have several clients who have been waiting over a year for a decision, and a few who have been waiting for more than two years. If these clients’ information were added to the chart above, it would tell an even more dismal story since they have already waited far longer than the median wait time for cases where a decision was issued.

Lastly, let’s look at recommended approvals. Recommended approvals are issued in cases where the Asylum Office is convinced that a case meets the standard for asylum, but the background check is not yet complete. People with recommended approvals can apply for employment authorization, but cannot sponsor their family members who are waiting to join them in the U.S. The following chart shows how long our clients have waited from the date of the recommended approval to the date of the final decision (never mind how long they might have already waited to get the recommended approval). Information about people who have received recommended approvals and who are still waiting for their final decisions are also shown in the same chart:

Despite making numerous inquiries about our pending cases, we have never received a specific answer as to why delays occur. Usually, the Asylum Office informs us that the delay is due to the security background check. However, it is unclear why the background checks take so long for affirmative asylum seekers, but do not cause delays for other applicants seeking benefits from USCIS. Interestingly, asylum seekers in Immigration Court do not face these types of delays either, even when they come from conflict zones or countries where terrorism is a concern. Only affirmative asylum seekers seem subject to these inordinate delays.

Can we draw general conclusions about the operation of the Arlington Asylum Office based on our data? It is difficult to say. Many of our clients come from places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where security-background-check delays are more burdensome. Also, our sample size is relatively small. Nevertheless, our findings comport with what we hear from other attorneys and applicants with cases in Arlington (and other asylum offices).

Since the backlog began in 2013, the Asylum Division has been working to improve the situation by hiring more officers and modifying some of its procedures. We are hopeful that the asylum system will continue to change to better meet applicants’ needs. Until then, we will continue to analyze data from our cases.

My intrepid associate, Ruth Dickey, has been analyzing data from our cases filed at the Arlington Asylum Office during the past few years. She reports her findings here:

In December 2014, USCIS announced that it would address the asylum backlog in a new way: “First in, first out.” Prior to this new policy, the Asylum Offices were trying to complete as many cases as possible within 60 days. Cases that could not be interviewed within 60 days fell into the backlog. Over time, the number of cases entering the backlog grew and grew. Nationally, as of May 2015, over 85,000 applications are stuck in the backlog.

When we learned about the new “first in, first out” policy, we were hopeful that our oldest cases would be interviewed one after another in quick succession. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen—at least not yet (hope springs eternal, even for asylum lawyers). Let’s take a closer look at what is going on at the Arlington Asylum Office, the office where most of our cases are pending.

During 2013 and 2014, we filed 136 cases that are analyzed here (some cases—where the applicant moved to a different jurisdiction, for example—were excluded from the analysis in order not to skew the data). As you can see from the chart below, a large percentage of our cases fell into the backlog during those years, particularly during the second and third quarters of 2013. The low interview numbers in mid-2013 are likely due to the summer “border surge,” when many Central Americans started arriving at our Southern border and requesting asylum. The surge continued into 2014 and continues up until today. Especially in the beginning, USCIS was not prepared for the surge, and so we suspect the low interview numbers during the second and third quarters of 2013 are due to the government’s inability to deal with the sudden increase in applications.

As you can see in the next chart, a higher percentage of our cases were interviewed in 2014 than in 2013, suggesting that the Asylum Office was handling the volume more effectively. Even so, a significant portion of our cases—almost 40%—fell into the backlog in 2014. Given that the government has already interviewed the majority of cases from the fourth quarter of 2013 and from 2014, we are hopeful that once the Asylum Office reaches those cases, it will move through that portion of the backlog more quickly (the Arlington Asylum Office is currently interviewing cases filed in August 2013—about half way through the third quarter).

Since the change to the “first in, first out” policy, things have been moving slowly in Arlington. Only 16 of our backlogged cases have been scheduled for interviews during the first six months of 2015. As a point of comparison, during the same period in 2014, we had exactly twice that many—32 cases—interviewed.

For those people in the backlog who have been scheduled for an interview in 2015 (since the implementation of the new policy), how long did they have to wait? From the date the application was received until the date of the interview, the median wait time was 678 days. The following chart shows the wait times (in days – on the vertical axis) for our clients who were interviewed in 2015. You can see that there is some variability in wait times:

The family that had to wait the longest—809 days—had been scheduled for an earlier interview, but was rescheduled because their file was apparently not in the Asylum Office (where it disappeared to, we don’t know). It took an additional four months to retrieve the file and get the interview. Hopefully, we won’t see this problem again. Another of the longer-delayed cases had been scheduled for an earlier interview, but was rescheduled by the Asylum Office without explanation. This happens periodically, and we even saw it on occasion in the good old days, prior to the backlog.

Once people are finally interviewed, how long does it take to get a decision? The Asylum Office generally tries to make decisions in two weeks. Of the 16 cases from 2015, eight have received decisions. Sixteen cases is a very small number, and so we can only draw limited conclusions from this data. However, the oldest case in the group of 16 has been languishing since January. And, unfortunately, this person is not alone. Many others who were interviewed in 2013 and 2014 are still waiting for their decisions.

So that is a look at what we know now. As we continue to analyze the data, we will post what we learn.

A Statistical Look at the Asylum Office

A Statistical Look at the Arlington Asylum Office