Judge Philip Fluhr
FY 2020 - 2025*, Chicago Immigration Court
*data covers the first 11 months of fiscal year 2025
Published Nov 7, 2025
Philip N. Fluhr was appointed as an immigration judge to begin hearing cases in November 2023. Judge Fluhr earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1995 from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and a Juris Doctor in 1998 from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law. From 2017 to 2023, and from 2011 to 2016, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. From 2016 to 2017, he was a partner with LeClairRyan in Chicago and Newark, New Jersey. From 2006 to 2011, he served as senior associate general counsel in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington D.C. From 2002 to 2006, he worked with Connell Foley LLP as an associate in Roseland, New Jersey. From 1998 to 2002, he served with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Navy, first as a military prosecutor based at Fleet Activities Yokosuka in Japan and then as a legal officer on board the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, which was homeported in Yokosuka, Japan. From 2003 to 2023, he served as a reserve officer assigned to the following locations: the Pentagon; Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island; MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida; Naval Base San Diego in California; and the Washington Navy Yard. Since affiliating with the reserve component, Judge Fluhr has deployed to the Philippines, Iraq, Qatar, and Afghanistan. Judge Fluhr is a member of the Illinois State Bar, the New Jersey State Bar, and the Pennsylvania Bar.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on decisions by Judge Fluhr were examined for the period covering fiscal years 2020 through the first 11 months of 2025. During this period, court records show that Judge Fluhr decided 170 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, he granted asylum for 88, granted 3 other types of relief, and denied relief to 79. Converted to percentage terms, Fluhr denied 46.5 percent and granted 53.6 percent of asylum cases (including forms of relief other than asylum).
Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Fluhr's denial rate each fiscal year over this recent period. (Rates for years with less than 25 decisions are not shown.)
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge Fluhr's denial rate of 46.5 percent, Immigration Court judges across the country denied 58.9 percent of asylum claims during this same period. Judges at the Chicago Immigration Court where Judge Fluhr decided these cases denied asylum 44.2 percent of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge Fluhr's asylum grant and denial rates are compared with other judges serving on the same court in this table. Note that when an Immigration Judge serves on more than one court during the same period, separate Immigration Judge reports are created for any Court in which the judge rendered at least 100 asylum decisions.
Why Do Denial Rates Vary Among Judges?
Although denial rates are shaped by each Judge's judicial philosophy, denial rates are also shaped by other factors, such as the types of cases on the Judge's docket, the detained status of immigrant respondents, current immigration policies, and other factors beyond an individual Judge's control. For example, TRAC has previously found that legal representation and the nationality of the asylum seeker are just two factors that appear to impact asylum decision outcomes.
The composition of cases may differ significantly between Immigration Courts in the country. Within a single Court when cases are randomly assigned to judges sitting on that Court, each Judge should have roughly a similar composition of cases given a sufficient number of asylum cases. Then variations in asylum decisions among Judges on the same Immigration Court would appear to reflect, at least in part, the judicial philosophy that the Judge brings to the bench. However, if judges within a Court are assigned to specialized dockets or hearing locations, then case compositions are likely to continue to differ and can contribute to differences in asylum denial rates.
Representation
When asylum seekers are not represented by an attorney, almost all of them (77%) are denied asylum. In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of represented asylum seekers are successful. In the case of Judge Fluhr, 10.6% were not represented by an attorney. See Figure 3. For the nation as a whole, about 17.1% of asylum seekers are not represented.
Nationality
Asylum seekers are a diverse group. Over one hundred different nationalities had at least one hundred individuals claiming asylum decided during this period. As might be expected, immigration courts located in different parts of the country tend to have proportionately larger shares from some countries than from others. And, given the required legal grounds for a successful asylum claim, asylum seekers from some nations tend to be more successful than others.
The largest group of asylum seekers appearing before Judge Fluhr came from Venezuela. Individuals from this country made up 20.6% of his caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Fluhr were: Colombia (10.6%), India (9.4%), Nicaragua (9.4%), Honduras (8.2%). See Figure 4.
In the nation as a whole during this same period, major nationalities of asylum seekers, in descending order of frequency, were Honduras (11.2%), Guatemala (11.2%), El Salvador (10.9%), Mexico (8.2%), China (5.2%), Venezuela (5.2%), India (5.1%), Ecuador (4.5%), Nicaragua (4.4%), Colombia (4.4%), Brazil (3.1%), Russia (3.1%), Cuba (2.8%).
