Judge Theresa Holmes-Simmons
Judge Holmes-Simmons was appointed as an Immigration Judge in November 1998. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985 from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a Juris Doctorate in 1988 from Rutgers University School of Law. Judge Holmes-Simmons served as an assistant district counsel for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York from 1996 to 1998. She worked as a special prosecutor and assistant attorney general, New York State Attorney General's Office in New York, from 1994 to 1996. Judge Holmes-Simmons served as an assistant district attorney with the New York County District Attorney's Office from 1988 to 1994. She is a member of both the New York and New Jersey Bars.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on Judge Holmes-Simmons decisions are available for the period covering fiscal year 2000 through the early months of 2005. During this period, Judge Holmes-Simmons is recorded as deciding 1489 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, she granted 614, gave 346 conditional grants, and denied 529. Converted to percentage terms, Holmes-Simmons denied 35.5 percent and granted (including conditional grants) 64.5 percent. Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Holmes-Simmons 's denial rate fiscal year-by-year over this recent period.
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge Holmes-Simmons 's denial rate of 35.5, nationally during this same period, immigration court judges denied 61.9 percent of asylum claims. In the New York Immigration Court where Judge Holmes-Simmons was usually based, judges there denied asylum 48.6 % of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge Holmes-Simmons 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 Holmes-Simmons receives a rank of 203. That is 202 judges denied asylum at higher rates, and 21 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 Holmes-Simmons , 1.2 % 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 Holmes-Simmons , the largest group of asylum seekers appearing before her came from China . Individuals from this nation made up 55.9 % of her caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Holmes-Simmons were: Albania (5.9 %), Russia (3.6%), Indonesia (3.2%), Yugoslavia (3.1%). 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%).
