Immigration judge approval rates vary widely because outcomes in immigration court depend on far more than the judge’s name on the docket. During August 2025, roughly 19.2 percent of asylum seekers were granted asylum nationwide.1TRAC. Immigration Court Asylum Grant Rates Cut in Half That national figure hides enormous spread. Inside a single courthouse, one judge may grant asylum in more than 90 percent of cases while a colleague down the hall grants it in under 5 percent. Representation, the type of relief sought, circuit court precedent, whether the respondent is detained, and the individual judge’s temperament all push the numbers in different directions.
What an Approval Rate Actually Measures
An immigration judge’s approval rate reflects the percentage of completed cases in which the judge granted some form of relief from removal: asylum, cancellation of removal, adjustment of status, or another protection that lets the person remain in the United States. The rate is calculated from decisions on the merits, so certain procedural outcomes sit outside it.
Two of those outcomes trip people up. Administrative closure pauses a case and takes it off the active calendar without any ruling on whether the person can stay; the case can be put back on the calendar through a motion to recalendar.2eCFR. 8 CFR 1003.18 – Docket Management Termination ends the case entirely. Neither counts as a grant of status. A judge with many closures or terminations may show a lower “approval” rate even though many people on that docket avoided deportation. Any time you look at a judge’s statistics, check whether the source separates procedural outcomes from merits decisions.
Why Representation Is the Biggest Driver
No single factor predicts outcomes more reliably than whether the respondent has a lawyer. Across immigration court cases decided from FY 2019 through 2024, 62 percent of people without an attorney were ordered deported, compared to 27 percent of those with legal representation.3American Immigration Council. Amidst Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign, Report Shows Access to Lawyers is Critical Roughly two-thirds of represented immigrants avoided deportation through asylum, termination, or another favorable outcome.4Iowa Law Review. Access to Counsel in Immigration Court, Revisited
Most people in immigration court don’t have lawyers. As of March 2024, about 33 percent of all respondents with pending cases had legal representation.5Congress.gov. U.S. Immigration Courts: Access to Counsel in Removal Proceedings Unlike criminal court, the government does not provide a free attorney. Federal law guarantees the right to counsel in removal proceedings, but only “at no expense to the Government.”6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1229a – Removal Proceedings For detained respondents, the gap is sharper: 93 percent of detained people without a lawyer were ordered removed, compared to 82 percent of detained people with counsel.7American Immigration Council. Where Can You Win in Immigration Court?
This is the first reason a raw approval rate can mislead. A judge assigned heavily to unrepresented cases or a detained docket will show lower approvals in part because the respondents in front of that judge face structural disadvantages in building their cases.
How the Type of Relief Shapes the Odds
The kind of protection a person is asking for changes the picture significantly. Asylum requires proving a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.8eCFR. 8 CFR 1208.13 – Establishing Asylum Eligibility The applicant carries the burden of proof and must offer credible testimony and supporting evidence showing the fear is both genuine and objectively reasonable.
Cancellation of removal for non-permanent residents sets a higher bar. The applicant must show at least ten years of continuous physical presence, good moral character during that time, no disqualifying criminal convictions, and that deportation would cause “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a qualifying U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, parent, or child.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1229b – Cancellation of Removal; Adjustment of Status That hardship standard is notoriously hard to meet, and judges set very different thresholds for what qualifies. A judge who hears mostly cancellation cases will often grant at lower rates than one hearing mostly asylum, independent of personality or ideology.
Court Location and Circuit Precedent
Where your case is heard matters almost as much as the facts. More than 600 immigration judges sit in 73 courts and three adjudication centers across the country.10Executive Office for Immigration Review. Office of the Chief Immigration Judge Each court sits in a federal circuit, and each circuit interprets the Immigration and Nationality Act somewhat differently. Those interpretations create binding precedent that immigration judges in that circuit must follow.
The practical gap is stark. TRAC data covering FY 2020 through 2025 shows that in the San Francisco Immigration Court, the judge with the highest asylum grant rate approved 97.1 percent of cases, while the judge with the lowest approved 4.8 percent. In New York City, the range ran from 92.4 percent to 2.6 percent.1TRAC. Immigration Court Asylum Grant Rates Cut in Half Atlanta’s judges skewed heavily toward denial, with many denying asylum in more than 84 percent of decided cases, and in Charlotte one judge denied in 99.1 percent of cases.11TRAC. Judge-by-Judge Asylum Decisions in Immigration Courts Courts on the Pacific Coast had the lowest overall removal order rate for non-detained cases at 34.2 percent, while Midwest courts had the highest at 46.2 percent.7American Immigration Council. Where Can You Win in Immigration Court?
Circuit law drives a lot of this. How broadly a circuit defines “particular social group” controls which asylum claims can get off the ground at all. A theory that works under one circuit’s precedent may be legally barred under another. Local factors stack on top: the availability of pro bono attorneys, the nationalities common on a court’s docket, and whether the court handles mainly detained or non-detained cases.
Detained and Expedited Dockets
Detained dockets consistently produce higher removal rates than non-detained ones. The top five detained courts all had removal order rates above 90 percent, and even the lowest-ranked detained court still ordered removal in nearly 73 percent of cases.7American Immigration Council. Where Can You Win in Immigration Court? People in custody have limited access to legal aid, trouble gathering documents and country-condition evidence, difficulty communicating with witnesses, and compressed hearing schedules.
Speed hurts outcomes in the same way. The Dedicated Docket initiative, launched in 2021 to accelerate family asylum cases, closed roughly 39,000 cases with only 7 percent resulting in a grant of asylum. Just 34 percent of people on the docket secured legal representation, and only 33 percent filed an asylum application at all.12TRAC. A National Assessment of the Biden Administration’s Dedicated Docket Initiative When a judge’s docket runs fast, the approval rate drops. That number tells you less about the judge than about the conditions respondents faced before walking in.
Language Access Quietly Pulls Numbers Down
More than 85 percent of people appearing in immigration court have limited English proficiency. When interpretation is incomplete or incompetent, a respondent may not understand questions during testimony, miss procedural instructions, or fail to communicate the details their case rests on. Immigration courts do not require the same interpreter certifications used in federal district courts, and the quality of telephone or video interpretation varies between courtrooms. Untranslated forms and documents compound the problem. These barriers don’t appear in the data as their own category, but they shape outcomes across a large share of the docket.
You Cannot Pick Your Immigration Judge
This is where expectations usually collide with reality. You do not get to choose your immigration judge. Cases are assigned based on the court with jurisdiction, which is typically set by where the Notice to Appear was filed. Judges inside that court are assigned through an internal docketing system, not by respondent preference.
A change of venue is possible, but the standard is “good cause,” and the motion must be filed with the court after the charging document has been lodged. The other party gets notice and a chance to oppose, and you must provide a fixed street address in the new jurisdiction.13eCFR. 8 CFR 1003.20 – Change of Venue In practice, venue changes are granted for legitimate reasons like moving to a new city or being closer to counsel, not for judge-shopping. If your case lands with a judge who grants rarely, the realistic response is to build the strongest possible record, not to try to escape the courtroom.
Where to Look Up a Specific Judge
Two public sources carry judge-level data. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University publishes a judge-by-judge breakdown of asylum decisions across multiple fiscal years.11TRAC. Judge-by-Judge Asylum Decisions in Immigration Courts You can look up a judge by name or court location and see grant rates, denial rates, and the share of cases resolved through other means. Immigration attorneys use it routinely to understand a judge’s tendencies before a hearing.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review maintains its own Workload and Adjudication Statistics portal, which publishes aggregate data on court workloads, completion rates, and case outcomes nationwide.14Executive Office for Immigration Review. Workload and Adjudication Statistics EOIR data is useful for systemwide trends but does not break numbers down by individual judge.
To use either source, you need the judge’s full name or the specific court. And read the numbers with care. Approval rates shift as caseload composition, circuit precedent, and policy priorities change. A judge’s five-year average may look quite different from their most recent fiscal year.
Reading the Numbers Honestly
Every approval-rate statistic sits against a backdrop of extraordinary delay. As of FY 2025, the immigration court system had a pending caseload of roughly 3.75 million cases, down from a peak above 4.18 million.15Executive Office for Immigration Review. EOIR Announces Significant Immigration Court Milestones With around 600 judges handling that volume, cases routinely take years to reach a final hearing. Evidence becomes harder to obtain, witnesses move or lose contact, and respondents may lose touch with counsel. The backlog itself shapes outcomes in ways no chart captures.
Immigration judges sit within EOIR, an agency of the Department of Justice, not the independent federal judiciary. They exercise independent judgment in individual cases.16eCFR. 8 CFR 1003.10 – Immigration Judges Because they are DOJ employees, their working conditions, case targets, and policy directives come from the executive branch. When administrations change, enforcement priorities shift, and so do the numbers. A judge’s approval rate from three years ago may not predict what the same judge does today under different guidance. Use the data to prepare, not to predict.