Judge Thomas M. O'Leary
Judge O'Leary was appointed as an Immigration Judge in April 1997. Prior to his appointment at the Eloy Immigration Court, he served as an Immigration Judge at the Immigration Court in Imperial, California, from April 1997 to January 2000. Judge O'Leary received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Herbert H. Lehman College, City University of New York, in 1974, and a Juris Doctorate from Seattle University School of Law in 1977. From 1987 to 1997, he served as sector counsel, Border Patrol, in Tucson, Arizona. He also served as a special assistant U.S. attorney in the District of Arizona during this time. From January to August 1987, Judge O'Leary worked as assistant district counsel for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in Phoenix, Arizona. He served as a judge advocate in the U.S. Army from 1978 to 1986. Judge O'Leary worked as a deputy prosecuting attorney for Pierce County, Washington State, in Tacoma, Washington, from 1977 to 1978. He is a member of the Washington Bar.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on Judge O'Leary decisions are available for the period covering fiscal year 2000 through the early months of 2005. During this period, Judge O'Leary is recorded as deciding 126 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, he granted 7, gave 0 conditional grants, and denied 119. Converted to percentage terms, O'Leary denied 94.4 percent and granted (including conditional grants) 5.6 percent. Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge O'Leary 's denial rate fiscal year-by-year over this recent period.
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge O'Leary 's denial rate of 94.4, nationally during this same period, immigration court judges denied 61.9 percent of asylum claims. In the Eloy Immigration Court where Judge O'Leary was usually based, judges there denied asylum 97.9 % of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge O'Leary can also be ranked compared to each of the 224 individual immigration judges serving during this period who rendered at least one hundred decisions. If judges were ranked from 1 to 224 - where 1 represented the highest denial percent and 224 represented the lowest - Judge O'Leary receives a rank of 5. That is 4 judges denied asylum at higher rates, and 219 denied asylum the 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 (93%) of them are denied asylum. In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of represented asylum seekers are successful. In the case of Judge O'Leary , 61.9 % were not represented by an attorney. See Figure 3. For the nation as a whole, about 9.2 % 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 O'Leary , the largest group of asylum seekers appearing before him came from El Salvador . Individuals from this nation made up 14.5 % of his caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge O'Leary were: Guatemala (12.2 %), Mexico (8%), Vietnam (5.7%), Laos (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 (22.3%), Haiti (9.3%), Colombia (9.1%), Albania (4.0%), India (3.9%), Guatemala (3.4%), Indonesia (3.0%), El Salvador (2.4%), Armenia (2.1%), Mexico (1.9%), and Russia (1.9%).
