statistics

# Asylum Office# Asylum Seekers

Updates (or Lack Thereof) from the Asylum Office

There was a time during the good old days of the Obama Administration when the Asylum Office would release quarterly statistics and even hold in-person stakeholder meetings where advocates could talk to the Asylum Office leadership. The Trump Administration worked hard to end transparency in government, and the pandemic didn’t help. As a result, the meetings and quarterly data disappeared. I had hoped that the Biden Administration would revive these practices, but that was not to be.

So now-a-days, we have to get our data where we can. This isn’t easy, but recently–as a result of my involvement in some Congressional lobbying efforts–I came across information about the Asylum Office that I thought I would share here.

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By Jason Dzubow
# Asylum Office# Asylum Seekers# Immigration

USCIS Claims to Have Reduced Its Backlog–but It Depends on the Definition of “Backlog”

In an announcement earlier this month, USCIS claims to have “reduced overall backlogs by 15%.” This sounds like good news, and it would be–if it were actually true.

The reality, as discussed in the same announcement, is that “USCIS received 10.9 million filings and completed more than 10 million pending cases” in FY 2023 (October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023). While completing 10 million cases is no small accomplishment, by my math, if the Agency received 10.9 million cases and completed 10 million cases, their backlog has actually increased by 900,000 cases.

So why does USCIS claim that the backlog has been reduced by 15%? The answer hinges on the definition of the term “backlog.”

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By Jason Dzubow
# Immigration Court

Breaking Down the 2023 Immigration Court Data

Data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review–the office that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts–is notoriously unreliable. Nevertheless, we have to use what’s available. In that spirit, let’s take a look at EOIR’s statistics for Fiscal Year 2023 (which cover the period from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023) and see what we can learn.

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By Jason Dzubow
# Asylum Seekers# Immigration Court

Asylum Data from Immigration Court Raises More Questions Than It Answers

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the organization that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts, has released new data about asylum grant rates by country of origin. While EOIR deserves credit for trying to be more transparent, it is difficult to know what to make of these numbers. They are confusing, poorly organized, and–for lack of a better word–strange.

Here, we’ll take a look at the data and try to parse some meaning from EOIR’s madness.

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By Jason Dzubow
# Immigration Court

The Difference (or Lack Thereof) Between “Democratic” and “Republican” Immigration Judges

Question: Who do you think is more likely to deny an asylum case, an Immigration Judge appointed by a Republican president or an Immigration Judge appointed by a Democratic president?

As far as I can tell, no one has ever researched this question before; so our team of statisticians here at The Asylumist spent the last few months crunching the numbers, and we now have our answer. If you’re like me, you might find their conclusion a bit surprising.

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By Jason Dzubow
# Asylum Office# Asylum Seekers

Asylum Office Finally Releases New-ish Statistics

Back in 2019, the Trump Administration ended the long-standing practice of releasing data about our nation’s Asylum Offices. The Biden Administration has not seemed particularly eager to restore transparency, but now, a year and a half after President Biden took office, we finally have some new data from the Asylum Division. Mind you, the data is only current as of December 31, 2021, but we are told more information will be released soon. Since “soon” in asylum world tends to mean “not any time soon,” I’ve decided to write about the information we have now, rather than wait for a second data dump, which may or may not be released in the near future.

The new data gives us a lot to discuss and sheds some light on why cases are moving so slowly. It also raises questions about how the asylum system is working–or not working.

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By Jason Dzubow
# Asylum Seekers# Immigration

On Luck

For years, practitioners and academics have complained about inconsistent decisions at the Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts, and there’s plenty of data to back up this concern. Recently, two sets of cases in my office brought this problem home, and illustrated how luck impacts who receives protection in the U.S. and who does not. … Read more

By Jason Dzubow
# Asylum Office# Asylum Seekers

New Data Shows that Most (But Not All) Asylum Offices Are Getting Tougher

Last fall, the Asylum Division cancelled its quarterly stakeholder engagement meeting and postponed the release of data about the various Asylum Offices. Now, finally, that information has been released. The news is generally bad (who would have guessed?), but the data contains some bright spots and surprises–as well as a few mysteries. Here, we’ll take … Read more

By Jason Dzubow