Asylum denial rates rose during the initial months of the Trump Administration and then leveled off. Denial rates rose again in June after former Attorney General Jeff Sessions restricted grounds on which immigration judges could grant asylum.

Most of these asylum applicants had arrived well before President Trump assumed office. Given the backlog in the Immigration Court, about nine in ten decisions in represented cases had begun over 12 months before. However, over half the cases for unrepresented applicants had taken 12 months or less to decide.

The outcome for asylum seekers continued to depend on the identity of the immigration judge assigned to hear the case. The San Francisco Immigration Court led the country in having the widest disparity among judges serving on the same court. Depending upon the judge, denial rates ranged from 97 percent down to 10 percent.

Rising denial rates were not the result of asylum seekers failing to show up for their hearing, or increased difficulty in finding representation. During FY 2018, in 98.6 percent of all grant or deny asylum decisions the immigrants were present in court. Last year also saw a significant increase in the proportion of decided cases with representation. During FY 2018 representation rates increased to 84.4 percent.

To read the full report covering both asylum decisions and final case outcomes, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/539/

A brand new web query tool allows users for the first time to drill in to examine, month-by-month, denial decisions by court, hearing location, county and state of the immigrant's residence, nationality, custody, representation status and more:

http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/

Judge-by-judge reports comparing each judge's asylum decisions have also been updated through FY 2018 at:

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

In addition, many of TRAC's free query tools - which track the court's active backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more - updated through September 2018. 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

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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