Judge Elisa C. Brasil

FY 2019 - 2024, San Francisco Immigration Court

Published Nov 7, 2024

Elisa C. Brasil was appointed as an immigration judge to begin hearing cases in May 2023. Judge Brasil earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1988 from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Juris Doctor in 1993 from the University of California Hastings College of the Law (now known as University of California College of the Law, San Francisco). From 2009 to 2023, she was in private practice at the Law Offices of Elisa C. Brasil in San Francisco handling cases before EOIR and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security, including on a pro bono basis. From 2001 to 2009, she was an associate attorney at the Law Offices of Kaiser and Capeci in San Francisco where she also handled immigration cases on a pro bono basis. Judge Brasil is a member of the State Bar of California.

Deciding Asylum Cases

Detailed data on decisions by Judge Brasil were examined for the period covering fiscal years 2019 through 2024. During this period, court records show that Judge Brasil decided 158 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, she granted asylum for 155, granted 1 other types of relief, and denied relief to 2. Converted to percentage terms, Brasil denied 1.3 percent and granted 98.7 percent of asylum cases (including forms of relief other than asylum).

Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Brasil's denial rate each fiscal year over this recent period. (Rates for years with less than 25 decisions are not shown.)

Nationwide Comparisons

Compared to Judge Brasil's denial rate of 1.3 percent, Immigration Court judges across the country denied 57.7 percent of asylum claims during this same period. Judges at the San Francisco Immigration Court where Judge Brasil decided these cases denied asylum 28.3 percent of the time. See Figure 2.

Judge Brasil's asylum grant and denial rates are compared with other judges serving on the same court in this table. Note that when an Immigration Judge serves on more than one court during the same period, separate Immigration Judge reports are created for any Court in which the judge rendered at least 100 asylum decisions.

Why Do Denial Rates Vary Among Judges?

Although denial rates are shaped by each Judge's judicial philosophy, denial rates are also shaped by other factors, such as the types of cases on the Judge's docket, the detained status of immigrant respondents, current immigration policies, and other factors beyond an individual Judge's control. For example, TRAC has previously found that legal representation and the nationality of the asylum seeker are just two factors that appear to impact asylum decision outcomes.

The composition of cases may differ significantly between Immigration Courts in the country. Within a single Court when cases are randomly assigned to judges sitting on that Court, each Judge should have roughly a similar composition of cases given a sufficient number of asylum cases. Then variations in asylum decisions among Judges on the same Immigration Court would appear to reflect, at least in part, the judicial philosophy that the Judge brings to the bench. However, if judges within a Court are assigned to specialized dockets or hearing locations, then case compositions are likely to continue to differ and can contribute to differences in asylum denial rates.

Representation

When asylum seekers are not represented by an attorney, almost all of them (77%) are denied asylum. In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of represented asylum seekers are successful. In the case of Judge Brasil, 2.5% were not represented by an attorney. See Figure 3. For the nation as a whole, about 16.4% 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.

The largest group of asylum seekers appearing before Judge Brasil came from India. Individuals from this country made up 29.7% of her caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Brasil were: Guatemala (13.9%), Mexico (12.7%), El Salvador (12.0%), China (5.7%). See Figure 4.

In the nation as a whole during this same period, major nationalities of asylum seekers, in descending order of frequency, were El Salvador (14.0%), Guatemala (13.2%), Honduras (12.4%), Mexico (8.2%), China (6.1%), India (5.4%), Venezuela (4.0%), Ecuador (3.7%), Nicaragua (3.5%), Colombia (2.9%), Cuba (2.6%), Brazil (2.6%), Russia (2.4%).