Judge Agnelis L. Reese
FY 2001 - 2006
Judge Reese was appointed as an Immigration Judge in April 1997. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 from Louisiana Tech University, and a Juris Doctorate from Southern University Law Center in 1989. From 1989 to 1997, Judge Reese served as assistant district counsel, for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is a member of the Louisiana Bar.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on Judge Reese decisions are available for the period covering fiscal years 2001 through 2006. During this period, Judge Reese is recorded as deciding 114 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, she granted 7, gave no conditional grants, and denied 107. Converted to percentage terms, Reese denied 93.9 percent and granted (including conditional grants) 6.1 percent. Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Reese's denial rate fiscal year-by-year over this recent period. (Rates for years with less than 25 decisions are not shown.)
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge Reese's denial rate of 93.9 percent, nationally during this same period, immigration court judges denied 60.8 percent of asylum claims. In the Oakdale Immigration Court where Judge Reese was usually based, judges there denied asylum 79.6 percent of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge Reese 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 Reese receives a rank of 8. That is 7 judges denied asylum at higher rates, and 230 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 Reese, 12.3% 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 Reese, the largest group of asylum seekers appearing before her came from Colombia. Individuals from this nation made up 10.5 % of her caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Reese were: Haiti (10.5 %), China (8.8%), Albania (7%), Stateless (7%). 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%).
