Putting TRAC to Work
  Policy and Public Interest Groups
Cato Institute
June 20, 2019

Higher Asylum Grant Rates Predict Higher Family Appearance Rates in Top Immigration Courts
By David Bier


TRAC Immigration, a project of Syracuse University, published a report this week, showing that 81 percent of recently released families apprehended at the border showed up for all of their hearings. Some immigration court locations did much better than others in obtaining compliance from immigrant families. San Francisco’s court had almost zero no-shows, while two and five skipped out in Atlanta. TRAC’s report hypothesized that it was possible that “the lowered appearance rates in some courts arose from particular deficiencies in the recording, scheduling or notification systems there.” While this could be, there is no way to test for such variation. Another strong hypothesis, suggested by Aaron Reichlin-Melnik of American Immigration Council, is that immigrants are much more likely to fail to appear in courts where they have a lower probability of receiving asylum. Fortunately, TRAC also reports asylum grant rates by immigration court, allowing us to test this.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
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