The Scoop on Immigration Judges

TRAC’s Immigration website now contains detailed performance information about most of the the 200-plus immigration judges in the United States. Included are year-by-year percentages of asylum matters denied by each judge, comparisons in denial rates with other judges in the same immigration court as well as with all judges in the U.S., and information about the nationality of the asylum applications on which that judge ruled. Also included are biographical sketches for all judges — provided to TRAC by the Immigration Court and never before published in one place — covering such matters as college and law school attended and principal places of

employment before becoming a judge. Start at http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judgereports  and select a judge either by name or by the city in which the judge delivered the greatest number of his or her asylum decisions.

The new feature supplements TRAC’s very recent report documenting large disparities in asylum decisions, which can be viewed at

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/160/

Other improvements to TRAC’s immigration site — supported by the JEHT Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Knight Foundation and Syracuse University — include an expanded glossary with plain English definitions of frequently-used words and phrases in the immigration area and an enhanced library of reports by such federal government oversight offices as the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional Research Service and Inspector General offices. Go to the TRAC Immigration website at http://trac.syr.edu/immigration for these and all other features.

KJ