An increasing number of asylum seekers are attempting to navigate the Immigration Court system without representation. Over the last ten years the unrepresented proportion of asylum cases decided had grown from 13 percent to 20 percent. Asylum is currently being denied in nine out of every ten of these cases. The odds of success were five times higher with an attorney.

Mexico had the largest increase (up 408%) in asylum seekers among those nationalities with large numbers of asylum seekers, while Haiti showed the largest drop (down 89 percent). Those from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala had the highest denial rates.

For further representation and country-by-country details see TRAC's full report at:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/448/

For findings on how asylum outcomes have become increasingly dependent on the judge assigned, see court-by-court and judge-by-judge details at:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/447/

Many of TRAC's free query tools - which track new DHS filings, court backlogs, the handling of juvenile cases and much more - have now been updated through November 2016. For an index to the full list of TRAC's immigration tools go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl