Asylum Grant Rates Decline by a Third

Published Nov 19, 2024

Asylum seekers are having less and less success at their individual hearings before an Immigration Judge.[1] The latest case-by-case Court records for October 2024 show asylum grant rates had declined to just 35.8 percent. This is in down sharply from earlier in the current administration when grant rates had climbed to above 50 percent. See Figure 1.

As reported by TRAC, asylum grant rates had increased for most of FY 2022,[2] before dropping sharply as initiatives to accelerate asylum proceedings were introduced. Historically, asylum seekers have been much less successful when the time required to make their case is arbitrarily shortened with various forms of so-called “rocket dockets.”[3] During most of FY 2023, grant rates recovered slowly and reached above 50 percent once again, peaking at 52.6 percent in September 2023. Asylum grant rates have been edging downward since then.

Initially, the Court sharply increased the number of asylum claims it was able to rule on from around 2,000 in the early months of the administration to generally between 6,000 and 7,000 by August 2022– at least a threefold increase. See earlier Figure 1. Since then, the number of court decisions issued per month has fluctuated within this general range but has not risen. The number of asylum decisions in September and October 2024 were typical: one in the low side of this range (September 2024, 6,141 cases) and the other on the high side (October 2024, 6,897).

Asylum Decisions by Nationality

Conditions prevalent in different countries are understandably important factors related to whether or not Immigration Judges award asylum. Over the past two decades, asylum seekers from some countries have been highly successful and have been granted asylum in Immigration Court proceedings, while those from other countries have faced much greater difficulty.

While asylum seekers came from just about every country, during FY 2024 there were over 50 countries with at least 100 asylum decisions issued. There were five countries with grant rates of less than 20 percent. These were: Dominican Republic (11.0%), Mexico (16.6%), Colombia (19.3%), Ecuador (19.7%) and Brazil (19.7%). Peru was only slightly higher with 20.6 percent granted asylum.

Other nationalities had very high asylum grant rates. The top five were: Belarus (88.4%), Afghanistan (88.4%), Uganda (86.4%), Eritrea (85.3%) and Russia (85.2%). Most of these countries had a few hundred asylum decisions issued, although Russian asylum seekers received decisions in over 4,400 cases during FY 2024. A total of 619 decisions were issued to Afghan asylum seekers, the next largest group in the top five by asylum grant rate.

Asylum seekers tended to be concentrated, however, among a few countries. Just eight nationalities comprised over half of asylum decisions during FY 2024. Naturally, their grant rates made the largest contribution to the overall national rate. Most of these countries had below average grant rates. Indeed, two were among the bottom 5 with the lowest asylum success. These were Mexico and Colombia.

Table 1 provides asylum grant rates for nationalities that had at least 100 asylum decisions during FY 2024. Asylum statistics for all nationalities are available in TRAC’s Asylum Decision tool.