Immigration Court Asylum Grant Rates Cut in Half

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.

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.

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.[1] 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%.