Putting TRAC to Work
  News Organizations
NBC San Diego
May 10, 2018

Data Points to Wide Gap in Asylum Approval Rates at Nation’s Immigration Courts
By Stephen Stock, Rachel Witte and Jeremy Carroll


Years of data from immigration courts around the United States and compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University show that whether or not a person seeking asylum is granted that request depends more on where they live and appear before an immigration court judge than it does on the facts of the case. The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit closely tracked the asylum results at every U.S. immigration court over the past three years and found a wide variation in the number of asylum approvals depending upon the court; in some instances the rate varies as much as 75 percentage points. From 2016 through the first part of 2018, immigration courts in Los Angeles and San Francisco consistently ranked in the nation’s top 15 courts when it comes to the number of asylum requests granted. Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, New York and Boston were also in the top 15 each year. Court data show each of those courts grants asylum requests more than 50 percent of the time.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
Copyright 2018
TRAC TRAC at Work TRAC TRAC at Work News Organizations News Organizations