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Atlanta's 84 percent denial rate is above the 53 percent national average, says the report by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization that monitors the federal government.
TRAC and the government don't keep statistics on why asylum cases are approved or denied, so it's impossible to know why there are such wide disparities between the number of rejections in courts across the nation. In contrast to Atlanta, New York City's court denied 26 percent of applications between 2006 and May.
Attorneys who represent refugees say Atlanta judges are more skeptical and skewed toward the position of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces the nation's immigration laws, deports illegal immigrants and represents the government in asylum hearings.Three of the four Atlanta judges reviewed by TRAC worked for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, ICE's predecessor agency.
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