Judge Leonard I. Shapiro
FY 2006 - 2011, Boston Immigration Court
Judge Shapiro was appointed as an Immigration Judge in December 1990. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts in 1957, and a Juris Doctorate in 1961 from Boston University School of Law. From 1972 to 1990, he was a senior partner with Shapiro & Glassman in Boston. From 1961 to 1972, he was an attorney with the Law Offices of Robert G. Wolf, also in Boston. Judge Shapiro served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1958. He was chapter president of the New England Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association from 1986 to 1988, and coauthor of the 1988 Edition of The American Immigration Lawyers Association Textbook, and the 1995 Edition of The Immigration Judge Benchbook. Judge Shapiro was also the chairman of the Immigration Law Section of the Massachusetts Bar Association in 1990 prior to his appointment, and continues to be a member of that association. Judge Shapiro is a member of the Massachusetts Bar.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on Judge Shapiro decisions were examined for the period covering fiscal years 2006 through 2011 During this period, Judge Shapiro is recorded as deciding 658 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, he granted 231, gave no conditional grants, and denied 425. Converted to percentage terms, Shapiro denied 64.6 percent and granted (including conditional grants) 35.4 percent. Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Shapiro's denial rate fiscal year-by-year over this recent period.
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge Shapiro's denial rate of 64.6 percent, nationally during this same period, immigration court judges denied 53.2 percent of asylum claims. In the Boston Immigration Court where Judge Shapiro was based, judges there denied asylum 57.4 percent of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge Shapiro can also be ranked compared to each of the 256 individual immigration judges serving during this period who rendered at least one hundred decisions in a city's immigration court. If judges were ranked from 1 to 256 - where 1 represented the highest denial percent and 256 represented the lowest - Judge Shapiro here receives a rank of 114. That is 113 judges denied asylum at higher rates, and 142 denied asylum at the same rate or less often. Ranks are tallied separately for each immigration court. Should a judge serve on more than one court during this period, separate ranks would be assigned in any court that the judge rendered at least 100 asylum decisions in.
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 Shapiro, 8.8% were not represented by an attorney. See Figure 3. For the nation as a whole, about 11.1% 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 Shapiro, the largest group of asylum seekers appearing before him came from Guatemala. Individuals from this nation made up 14.4 % of his caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Shapiro were: Indonesia (13.1 %), Haiti (8.7%), China (7.4%), El Salvador (5.5%). 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 (23.3%), Haiti (8.4%), El Salvador (5.9%), Colombia (5.5%), Guatemala (5.3%), Indonesia (2.9%), India (2.6%), Venezuela (2.5%), Ethiopia (2.1%), Albania (2%), Honduras (2%), Mexico (2%), Guinea (1.6%).
