Judge Terry A. Bain
FY 2001 - 2006
Judge Bain was appointed as an Immigration Judge in February 1994. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1973 from George Washington University, and a Juris Doctorate from Brooklyn Law School in 1980. From 1986 to 1994, she worked as an attorney for Whitman, Breed, Abbott & Morgan in New York. Judge Bain also worked in private practice with Barst & Mukamal in New York from 1981 to 1986. She is a member of the New York Bar.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on Judge Bain decisions are available for the period covering fiscal years 2001 through 2006. During this period, Judge Bain is recorded as deciding 1990 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, she granted 1610, gave 189 conditional grants, and denied 191. Converted to percentage terms, Bain denied 9.6 percent and granted (including conditional grants) 90.4 percent. Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Bain's denial rate fiscal year-by-year over this recent period.
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge Bain's denial rate of 9.6 percent, nationally during this same period, immigration court judges denied 60.8 percent of asylum claims. In the New York Immigration Court where Judge Bain was usually based, judges there denied asylum 42.7 percent of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge Bain can also be ranked compared to each of the 238 individual immigration judges serving during this period who rendered at least one hundred decisions. If judges were ranked from 1 to 238 - where 1 represented the highest denial percent and 238 represented the lowest - Judge Bain receives a rank of 238. That is 237 judges denied asylum at higher rates, and 0 denied asylum at the same rate or less often.
Why Do Denial Rates Vary Among Judges?
Denial rates reflect in part the differing composition of cases assigned to different immigration judges. For example, being represented in court and the nationality of the asylum seeker appear to often impact decision outcome. Decisions also appear to reflect in part the personal perspective that the judge brings to the bench.
Representation
If an asylum seeker is not represented by an attorney, almost all (87%) of them are denied asylum. In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of represented asylum seekers are successful. In the case of Judge Bain, 1.9% were not represented by an attorney. See Figure 3. For the nation as a whole, about 8.2% of asylum seekers are not represented.
Nationality
Asylum seekers are a diverse group. Over one hundred different nationalities had at least one hundred individuals claiming asylum decided during this period. As might be expected, immigration courts located in different parts of the country tend to have proportionately larger shares from some countries than from others. And, given the required legal grounds for a successful asylum claim, asylum seekers from some nations tend to be more successful than others.
For Judge Bain, the largest group of asylum seekers appearing before her came from China. Individuals from this nation made up 52.2 % of her caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Bain were: Albania (9 %), Yugoslavia (3.5%), Guinea (3.2%), Indonesia (3.1%). See Figure 4.
In the nation as a whole during this same period, major nationalities of asylum seekers, in descending order of frequency, were China (22.3%), Colombia (10.2%), Haiti (9.9%), Albania (3.9%), Indonesia (3.8%), India (3.5%), Guatemala (3.1%), El Salvador (2.1%), Armenia (2.1%), Mexico (1.7%), Russia (1.6%), Ethiopia (1.6%), Pakistan (1.5%), and Cameroon (1.4%).
