Using court records on each completed case in Immigration Court. the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reports on the observed patterns between the language spoken, representation rates, and outcome.

Since the beginning of FY 2025, noncitizens have received legal counsel in about 38 percent of all immigration cases overall. Among languages with at least 1,000 completed cases, Punjabi-speakers are the most often represented in Immigration Court cases at 84 percent. Mandarin-speakers have the second-highest rate of receiving counsel, with representation in about 75 percent of cases. Spanish-speakers have been represented in only 34 percent of cases so far this fiscal year while Creole-speakers are the least-often able to access legal counsel, receiving representation in only 21 percent of cases.

FY 2025 has seen a drop in representation in Immigration Court generally, but speakers of some languages, including Russian, Portuguese, French, and Turkish, have experienced higher rates of representation in the last five months than in the previous four years. In contrast, representation for Arabic-, Creole-, and Spanish-speaking noncitizens have dropped off by ten percentage points or more during the same period.

Focusing just on those who were ordered removed, language again is seen to make a difference. Among cases which ended with a removal order, 93 percent of Creole-speakers went unrepresented. Spanish-speakers were unrepresented in more than 85 percent of cases that resulted in a removal order, while English speakers were unrepresented in 70 percent of their cases.