Published Nov 18, 2025
Over the last twelve months, the Immigration Court asylum grant rate has been cut in half. With the
government shutdown, the latest asylum data covers through the end of August 2025. During August 2025,
only 19.2 percent of asylum seekers were granted asylum. A year earlier during August 2024, the grant rate
was 38.2 percent. See Figure 1.
Figure 1. Asylum Grant Rates Cut in Half, Aug 2023-Aug 2025
While the rhetoric has sharply changed in the transition from the former Biden administration to the Trump
administration, the most recent declines under President Trump were actually a continuation of the
declining grant rate that had already been occurring under former President Biden. Indeed, Figure 1 shows
a steady decline in grant rates without any apparent shift or break in these trends when administrations
changed. Last year, as
TRAC’s annual report had noted, asylum seekers were already having less and less success at their individual hearings before an
Immigration Judge. This declining success rate continued its downward slide under President Trump.
The Trump administration, however, greatly increased the pace at which asylum decisions were being handed
down. During April and May 2025, the number of asylum decisions peaked at over 12,000 case completions as
compared with between roughly 6,000-7,000 that had prevailed under former President Biden. Since then, the
monthly number of asylum decisions has fallen from this peak by 25 percent. In August 2025, a total of
9,269 asylum cases were completed.
Figure 2. Asylum Cases Decided, Aug 2023-Aug 2025
President Trump also has been terminating Immigration Judges. The exact number of terminations remains
uncertain. However, NPR recently documented at least
70 Immigration Judges
who had received termination notices. In addition, President Trump holds the singular distinction of not
hiring a single new Immigration Judge during FY 2025.
However, the ramp-up of asylum case completions was aided by the hiring of
18 new Immigration Judges
during the first quarter of FY 2025 when President Biden was still in office.
Asylum Success Still Varies Widely Among Immigration Judges
Wide differences in Immigration Judge asylum grant rates are again evident within many Courts in the
latest release of TRAC’s Immigration Judge report series. These new reports update each judge’s asylum
decisions over the past six years through August 2025. Each of the latest individual judge reports is
available
here.
In this updated series, the widest difference between asylum grant rates was found in the San Francisco
Immigration Court. There the range between the judge with the highest grant rate (97.1%) and the lowest
grant rate (4.8%) was over 90 percentage points. The New York City Immigration Court was right behind with
a range of almost 90 percentage points. In New York City the highest asylum grant rate was 92.4%, compared
with the lowest asylum grant rate of just 2.6%.
The Boston Immigration Court had the third-highest range between the highest and lowest judge asylum grant
rates. In Boston‘s Court, the asylum grant rates differed by 85.4%.
In fourth and fifth place in the difference between individual Immigration Judge asylum grant rates was
the Sacramento Immigration Court with a range of 84.2% and the Arlington Immigration Court which had a
range of 84.1%.
Footnotes
^ On
October 24, 2025, the investiture of 25 temporary appointments of military officers who were serving as Judge Advocate
Generals (JAGs) were announced by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) along with 11
additional permanent Immigration Judges.
TRAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research project founded in 1989. Its public website has moved from
trac.syr.edu to tracreports.org. For more information, contact
info@tracreports.org.