Is “Refugee Roulette” Something of the Past?

A detailed analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of hundreds of thousands of records obtained from the Immigration Courts has determined that there has been a decrease in the hard-to-explain disparities in the rate at which judges issue denials in asylum matters. The new analysis examines the disparity rates found in the years before and after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — in the summer of 2006 — announced a 22-point program to improve the operation of the courts. The court data show that the disparity rates declined in ten of the fifteen districts which decide the bulk of all asylum matters. The new analysis follows up on TRAC disparity studies published in 2006 and 2007. Read the latest TRAC immigration report here.

Accompanying the report is a newly updated edition of TRAC’s unique system that gives the public, individual immigrants, immigration lawyers and others a way to examine the individual asylum decision records of any one of more than 200 immigration judges.

These efforts are part of a continuing series of reports covering various aspects of the Immigration Courts, and were supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Syracuse University. Since the series began, major supporters have included Carnegie, the Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the JEHT Foundation and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr., Fund.

As we have reported before, TRAC really is doing some important work!

KJ