Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: Asylum Denial Rate Drops to Twenty-Five Year Low

Justice Department data show that Immigration Judges are declining substantially fewer requests for asylum. Denial rates have reached the lowest level in the last quarter of a century according to a new analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This was one of many new findings to emerge from TRAC’s fifth annual monitoring report focusing on the processing of asylum requests by these specialized courts. In FY 1986, almost 9 out of 10 (89%) of such requests were declined. During the first nine months of FY 2010, only half (50%) were turned down. The analysis of hundreds of thousands of case-by-case records also found that the total number of asylum requests has been falling, that a higher proportion of asylum seekers are now represented by counsel, and that judge-to-judge disparities in denial rates remain a pervasive problem.

KJ