The latest data from our nation’s Immigration Courts reveals that judges are deciding more asylum cases than ever–and that denial rates are increasing.
The most recent numbers are from March 2025, and show that Immigration Judges adjudicated 10,933 asylum applications, which is the most cases ever decided in a single month. Of those, 76% were denied–another record.
Here, we’ll examine the data and see if we can learn more about what’s going on.
Asylum Offices around the country have become very busy. Oldest and newest cases, cases that were previously before the Immigration Court, and sometimes seemingly random cases are being scheduled for interviews. Often times, there is little advanced notice prior to the interview date. This means that applicants do not always have enough time to gather and submit their evidence, which is usually due at least a week before the interview.
Since it is not possible to know when you might be scheduled for an interview, or how much advanced notice you will have before the interview, the best approach is to gather your evidence now, so you are ready to go when the time comes.
By now, you’ve probably heard that the Trump Administration is not a fan of immigrants. They have been making changes to detain and deport more non-citizens, more quickly, and with fewer due process protections. To that end, the Administration is pressuring Asylum Officers and Immigration Judges to adjudicate more cases. These civil servants are already stretched thin, and so the additional work is likely to reduce decision quality, as well as damage morale. It will also make litigating cases more difficult for asylum seekers and other non-citizens, as they will have less time to present their cases, and–most probably–less time to prepare.
Last week, 13 of 28 members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) were purged. Those targeted include appellate judges appointed by the Biden Administration, some of whom were still on probation (BIA judges have a two-year probationary period) and others who had completed their probation. The firings, which go into effect next month, seem not to have complied with proper legal procedures, and are likely to be challenged in court by at least some of the terminated judges.
Having talked with people on the inside, this mass firing sounds like it is only the beginning. I’m told that the Trump Administration plans to radically re-make the Immigration Court system in order to dramatically reduce due process protections for non-citizens.
There was a time during the good old days of the Obama Administration when the Asylum Office would release quarterly statistics and even hold in-person stakeholder meetings where advocates could talk to the Asylum Office leadership. The Trump Administration worked hard to end transparency in government, and the pandemic didn’t help. As a result, the meetings and quarterly data disappeared. I had hoped that the Biden Administration would revive these practices, but that was not to be.
So now-a-days, we have to get our data where we can. This isn’t easy, but recently–as a result of my involvement in some Congressional lobbying efforts–I came across information about the Asylum Office that I thought I would share here. (more…)
In criminal law, if an accused person spends time behind bars before his conviction, that time can be credited towards his total sentence. Is there an equivalent concept in asylum law, where applicants routinely wait years for a decision in their case? (more…)
For years, the asylum backlogs in Immigration Court and the Asylum Office have been growing rapidly. But lately, they’ve been growing RAPIDLY–with a capital “R”. And a capital “APIDLY”. Probably I should add a few exclamation marks (!!!) after that and at least one “very” before it. What I’m trying to say is, of late, the backlogs have been growing at an insane rate.
Here, we’ll talk about what is happening and why, and try to guess what it all means for asylum seekers. (more…)
It is the job of a lawyer to learn about your situation and then advise you of your options. You want to know, “If I do X, what will happen?” In many areas of the law, attorneys can provide this type of advice. If you rob a bank and get caught, you will go to jail. If you sign a contract and then breach your agreement, you will be liable for damages. If you fail to pay taxes, you will face criminal and civil penalties.
But in immigration law–and particularly in asylum law–it is often impossible to provide precise advice. The unfortunate fact is that asylum seekers must live with significant uncertainty. (more…)
USCIS recently released some new information to Congress about the affirmative asylum backlog, and–surprise, surprise–the news is not good. The backlog continues to grow at a record-setting pace, meaning that under the agency’s last-in, first-out (LIFO) policy where new cases receive priority over old cases, those waiting for an interview are falling further and further behind. Worse, USCIS has indicated that they do not have the resources to reduce the backlog, and they don’t expect to receive those resources any time soon. (more…)
Here’s a common situation: A person files for asylum at the Asylum Office and her case is pending for years. During that time, she marries someone who does not have immigration status in the U.S., and she wants to add her spouse to her pending asylum application. And here’s another (less common) scenario: A person has a pending asylum application and the person’s child arrives in the United States and wants to join their parent’s case. Today, we’ll discuss how to add a dependent to an existing asylum case. (more…)
Immigration Courts across the U.S. have been randomly rescheduling and advancing cases without regard to attorney availability or whether we have the capacity to complete our cases. The very predictable result of this fiasco is that lawyers are stressed and overworked, our ability to adequately prepare cases has been reduced, and–worst of all–asylum seekers are being deprived of their right to a fair hearing. Besides these obvious consequences, the policy of reshuffling court cases is having other insidious effects that are less visible, but no less damaging. Here, I want to talk about some of the ongoing collateral damage caused by EOIR’s decision to toss aside due process of law in favor of reducing the Immigration Court backlog. (more…)
In a meeting held earlier this month, we received some updates from the Asylum Division. Although Acting Director Sue Raufer could point to some positive developments in asylum world, the news is generally pretty bleak. In a development that will shock no one, the worst news relates to the backlog, which is growing at an unprecedented rate.
It’s the rare occasion when I can report some good news, but it seems that USCIS is taking action to help people in the affirmative asylum backlog. According to the most recent data (from December 2021), there are about 438,500 cases pending at the Asylum Office. The large majority of these applicants have not yet received interviews. Now, USCIS has hired an additional 80 Asylum Officers who will be dedicated to interviewing applicants who filed for asylum on or before January 1, 2016, meaning that they will be interviewing asylum seekers who have been waiting the longest.
Here, we’ll discuss what this means for those applicants, and also for people who filed after January 1, 2016. I’ll also make some suggestions about how to schedule these interviews in a way that is fair to applicants and to their lawyers (i.e., I will beg USCIS to have mercy on us). (more…)
When you were in middle school, did you ever have a crush on a classmate? Did you analyze every stray glance and dissect every off-hand comment for signs that your crush liked you too? I feel like that’s what we’ve come to as observers of the asylum system. The mere mention of the words “asylum” and “backlog” by a government bureaucrat in the same sentence has become cause for celebration. My crush knows I exist! Woo Hoo!
Such a momentous event came to pass last week, when the Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) included the following paragraph in a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, summarizing President Biden’s “Discretionary Funding Request” for FY2022–
Supports a Humane and Efficient Immigration System. The discretionary request supports the promise of a fair and equitable immigration system that welcomes immigrants and reflects the Nation’s values. The discretionary request provides $345 million for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to address naturalization and asylum backlogs, support up to 125,000 refugee admissions in 2022, and allow for systems and operations modernization. The discretionary request supports expanded access to the Alternatives to Detention program and provides enhanced case management services, particularly for families seeking asylum. (more…)
Way back in the summer of 2015, immigration lawyers started to notice that EOIR was scheduling hundreds, maybe thousands, of Immigration Court cases for a single date: November 29, 2019. Supposedly, this was a holding date, and all those cases would be rescheduled. Now, November 29, 2019 is upon us. As such, I thought it might be nice to re-visit my blog post from back in 2015, when all this seemed a long way off (plus, it being Thanksgiving, I wasn’t much in the mood to write something new). Have things changed since 2015? You bet. But mostly for the worse, as there are now over one million cases in the Immigration Court backlog (in contrast to 2015, when there were about 456,000 cases in the backlog). Anyway, without further ado, here is my blog post from July 1, 2015–
Postcard from the Apocalypse: November 29, 2019
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If you’re reading this, maybe there’s still hope. Today is November 30, 2019. Dawn. Yesterday, the world came to an end.
I am one of the few survivors. The very few. And I am sending this transmission back in time by Tachyon beam in a desperate attempt to avert the apocalypse and to save humanity. By my calculation, this message should be received in July 2015. Back then, in your present, it was not too late. Things could have—could still—turn out differently.
What happened? Nuclear war? Environmental degradation? Rapture? No. Such disasters, we could have dealt with. It was something at once more horrifying and more mundane. More innocent, yet more insidious. Small, yet massive. You get the idea.
“What was it, then?!” you plead. Listen well, my friend, and I will tell you the tale of November 29, 2019. On that day, the U.S. Immigration Court system collapsed upon itself, creating a singularity–a black hole, if you will–that absorbed everything in its path: First it took foreigners. No one seemed to mind. Then it took hippies, Libertarians, bachelorettes, and then people who enjoy listening to the Redirect immigration podcast (seriously, though, you should be listening to that). Finally, it took everyone and everything else. Now, all that’s left is me and a few others. We don’t have much time.
It all began innocently enough: Immigration Courts started scheduling a dozen or so aliens for hearings at the same time and place. Didn’t they know that this violates a basic law of physics and, as it turns out, a basic law of Immigration Court—No two aliens can occupy the same hearing space at the same time! Read your Archimedes, people! Isaac Newton! Anybody?
Oh, the powers-that-be at EOIR (the Executive Office for Immigration Review) didn’t think it was a big deal. They were violating the alien’s due process rights, but only a little. And it was for a good cause—efficiency, so what did it matter? But then they got arrogant. Master Calendar Hearings with 40, 50, 60 or more people. Half a dozen respondents on the same transcript, answering charges and conceding removability en masse. Due process protections eroding. But so slowly that no one noticed. The lawyers, the aliens, all of us became complacent. We let it happen.
And then things got worse. In 2014, Immigration Judges started scheduling scores, then hundreds, then thousands of aliens to appear on a single day—November 29, 2019. They claimed this was some sort of “holding” date; that the cases would be rescheduled. Lies! Instead of making the hard journey up Mt. Sinai to seek justice, they worshipped below at the idols of efficiency and budget cuts. Who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind!
Before anyone really understood what was happening, tens of thousands of immigrants were scheduled to appear in Immigration Court on that fateful day, November 29, 2019 (may it be obliterated from memory). Throughout November, they gathered. They came by themselves or with their families. Small children without parents. Old people. People who had lived in the U.S. for years and people who were fresh off the hovercraft (hovercrafts were very popular in 2019). They filled the Immigration Court waiting rooms and spilled into the hallways. Masses of people, huddled together. Waiting. Soon, the court buildings were full, but still they came.
EOIR saw what was happening. They could have stopped the madness. They could have rescheduled the cases. But they didn’t. Why? Was it a conspiracy that reached to the highest levels of government? Or had some scheduling clerk gone rogue? I suppose we’ll never know, and anyway, it doesn’t much matter.
The more the foreigners gathered, the more they came. It was exponential, logarithmic, seismic. Soon, it wasn’t only people facing deportation. People with TPS started showing up. They were followed by conditional residents who were still married (miracle of miracles). Then there were people with valid visas, still in lawful status: B’s, TN’s, and L’s, Q’s and R’s, H1-B’s and E’s, all varieties of A’s and J’s, and even the odd I or C visa holder. I knew we were in trouble by the time the lawful permanent residents began showing up. And when U.S. citizens started arriving, it was clear that something terrible would happen.
And then it did. The collective gravity of all those people began feeding on itself, swallowing everything and everyone in its path–a black hole. But like I say, if you’re reading this, there’s still hope. There is a simple solution to the Immigration Court backlog. It’s so obvious, that it’s a wonder no one noticed it before. All you have to do is…
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