Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Record Number of Asylum Cases in FY 2019
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Immigration judges decided a record number of asylum cases in FY 2019. This past year judges decided 67,406 asylum cases, nearly two-and-a-half times the number from five years ago when judges decided 19,779 asylum cases. The number of immigrants who have been granted asylum more than doubled from 9,684 in FY 2014 to 19,831 in FY 2019. However, the number of immigrants who have been denied asylum or other relief grew even faster from 9,716 immigrants to 46,735 over the same time period.
More Chinese nationals were granted asylum than any other nationality. Next came El Salvadorian nationals, followed by asylum seekers from India.
Six-nine percent of asylum seekers were denied asylum or other relief in 2019. Nevertheless, 99 out of 100 attended all their court hearings.
Access to an attorney impacted the asylum outcomes. Only 16 percent of unrepresented asylum applicants received asylum or other forms of deportation relief. In contrast, twice the proportion (33%) of asylum applicants with an attorney received asylum or other relief.
Overall, asylum applicants waited on average 1,030 days – or nearly three years – for their cases to be decided. But many asylum applicants waited even longer: a quarter of applicants waited 1,421 days, or nearly four years, for their asylum decision.
To read the full report go to:
https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/588/
To examine these results in greater detail by nationality and court location, TRAC’s free asylum app is now updated with data through the end of November 2019 at:
https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/
Additional free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through November 2019. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:
https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/
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David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
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trac@syr.edu
http://trac.syr.eduThe Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (http://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (http://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to http://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.
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SOME INTERESTING TAKEAWAYS:
- Contrary to regime false narratives, non-detained asylum seekers continued to show up for their hearings approximately 99% of the time.
- Contrary to recent EOIR claims, representation of asylum seekers continued to make a huge difference: twice as many represented asylum seekers received relief.
- Nearly 20,000 individuals were granted asylum in FY 2019, twice as many as in FY 2014, although the number of cases denied grew even faster by 4.5x, to 46,735.
- The three “Northern Triangle” countries, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras ranked among the top five in number of asylum claims granted.
- Session’s biased decision in Matter of A-B- appears to have been responsible for artificially depressing asylum grant rates starting in June 2018.
- Even with extraordinary efforts by the regime to “game” the asylum system against applicants, 31% of the applicants still were successful in gaining relief in FY 2019.
- The New Due Process Army continues to “take the battle” to the regime: despite regime efforts to inhibit and discourage representation, nearly 85% of asylum applicants were represented in FY year 2019, a slight increase over the previous FY.
- Unrepresented asylum applicants are “railroaded” though the system at a much higher rate than represented applicants: nearly half of the unrepresented asylum cases that started in 2019 were completed, as opposed to approximately 10% of the represented ones.
- Non-detained, represented asylum applicants wait an average of three years for a merits hearing in Immigration Court.
- The number of asylum cases decided by Immigration Judges has risen 250% over the past five fiscal years.
- Asylum cases were 22.6% of the Immigration Court final decisions in FY 2019, as opposed to 10.7% in FY 2014.
- Deciding more asylum cases while intentionally “stacking” the system against asylum seekers has not stopped the mushrooming Immigration Court backlogs.
PWS
01-09-20