Judge Noel Anne Ferris
FY 2001 - 2006
Judge Ferris was appointed as an Immigration Judge in February 1994. She received an undergraduate degree in 1973 from Middlebury College, and a Juris Doctorate from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1980. Judge Ferris worked as an associate for Chadbourne & Parke from 1990 to 1994 in New York. She was appointed as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York while working for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1985 to 1990. From 1980 to 1984, she worked as an assistant corporation counsel for the New York Law Department. Judge Ferris is a member of the New York Bar.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on Judge Ferris decisions are available for the period covering fiscal years 2001 through 2006. During this period, Judge Ferris is recorded as deciding 990 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, she granted 465, gave 68 conditional grants, and denied 457. Converted to percentage terms, Ferris denied 46.2 percent and granted (including conditional grants) 53.8 percent. Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Ferris's denial rate fiscal year-by-year over this recent period.
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge Ferris's denial rate of 46.2 percent, nationally during this same period, immigration court judges denied 60.8 percent of asylum claims. In the New York Immigration Court where Judge Ferris was usually based, judges there denied asylum 42.7 percent of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge Ferris can also be ranked compared to each of the 238 individual immigration judges serving during this period who rendered at least one hundred decisions. If judges were ranked from 1 to 238 - where 1 represented the highest denial percent and 238 represented the lowest - Judge Ferris receives a rank of 190. That is 189 judges denied asylum at higher rates, and 48 denied asylum 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 (87%) of them are denied asylum. In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of represented asylum seekers are successful. In the case of Judge Ferris, 4.7% were not represented by an attorney. See Figure 3. For the nation as a whole, about 8.2% of 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 Ferris, the largest group of asylum seekers appearing before her came from China. Individuals from this nation made up 45.4 % of her caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Ferris were: Albania (7.7 %), Yugoslavia (4.9%), Mauritania (3.5%), Colombia (2.9%). 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%), Colombia (10.2%), Haiti (9.9%), Albania (3.9%), Indonesia (3.8%), India (3.5%), Guatemala (3.1%), El Salvador (2.1%), Armenia (2.1%), Mexico (1.7%), Russia (1.6%), Ethiopia (1.6%), Pakistan (1.5%), and Cameroon (1.4%).
