Asylum Denials Rise to 94% Amid the Remaking of the Immigration Court

Published Aug 31, 2026

The number of individuals Immigration Judges grant asylum to each month has been falling. In June 2026, only 771 individuals were granted asylum—less than a quarter of the number of individuals awarded asylum just three years ago. At the same time, the number of asylum decisions has grown resulting in soaring asylum denial rates. In June 2026, 94 percent of all asylum cases were denied.

Radical Transformation in Immigration Court Judge Bench

One factor affecting asylum outcomes has been the radical transformation of the Immigration Court bench, driven by the Trump administration’s use of its firing and appointment powers. Indeed, EOIR records indicate that a total of 279 Immigration Judges were fired or resigned during FY 2025 – FY 2026. This represented approximately 38 percent of the 735 Immigration Judges who were employed at the end of FY 2024 – the last full year of the Biden administration. In contrast, during the Biden years an annual average of 5 percent of judges resigned or otherwise left the bench during his four-year term in office (FY 2021 – FY 2024).

So far this year President Trump has hired 192 new judges, plus an additional 53 temporary judges have joined Immigration Judge ranks. In total, 743 judges were deciding asylum cases during FY 2026.[1] Of these, only 322 or 43 percent had been serving before President Trump assumed office. See Figure 1.

In addition, judges serving before President Trump assumed office began turning down an increasing proportion of asylum applications. For example, consider all 130 judges who remained on the bench and were actively handing down asylum decisions throughout the FY 2021 – FY 2026 period. Three-fourths of these judges increased the proportion of asylum cases they denied during FY 2026 as compared with their individual denial rates in FY 2021. This increase averaged 33 percentage points. The median increase in the denial rate was 28 percentage points.

Asylum Grant Rates Continue To Drop

With these trends, overall asylum grant rates have been steadily dropping and reached an all-time low in 2026. As TRAC has previously reported, asylum grant rates began a steady fall four years ago under the Biden administration. At the end of his presidency, the grant rate had fallen to 32 percent – down from over 50 percent earlier in President Biden’s term.

As shown in Figure 2, this decline continued under President Trump. While there has been some month-to-month fluctuations, the drop in grant rates has generally accelerated. In June 2026 the asylum grant rate had fallen to 5.5 percent while the denial rate had risen to 94.1 percent. The remaining 0.4 percent were denied asylum but granted another type of relief.

More cases are now being decided as well. With the recent hiring of several hundred new Immigration Judges, asylum case dispositions have increased to record levels. In April and May asylum case completions exceeded 13,000. They topped 14,000 in March and again in June 2026.

Case completions, however, have not risen steadily. After the Trump administration fired numerous judges, the number of decisions had dropped. In November and December 2025, asylum decisions had fallen to 8,800 – just above the level at the end of the Biden administration. See Figure 3.

2026 Updated Judge-by-Judge Reports on Asylum Decisions

TRAC’s latest edition of its judge-by-judge report series on asylum decisions has just been released and is available here. A comparison table displays individual asylum denial rates within each immigration court in descending order along with the total number of asylum decisions each judge decided on the merits during the six year period of FY 2021 to FY 2026 (through June).

Each report includes a comparison of the judge’s asylum denial rate to the Immigration Judges in that judge’s court as well as judges across the country and shows how the judge’s denial rates varied year-by-year.

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. Because legal representation and the asylum seeker’s nationality often affect asylum decision outcomes, each report discusses how the judge’s caseload compares on these two factors with the nationwide asylum decision caseload.