The San Jose Mercury News recently released the results of its study of asylum adjudications. The study, conducted with information gathered through a Freedom of Information Request, reveals what many instinctively knew about the asylum process – that whether a person is granted asylum depends less on the merits of the person’s case and more on the judge before whom they present their case. The paper examined 176,465 cases that came before the 219 Immigration Judges between 1995 and 1999.

Some judges granted asylum in half of the cases they heard, while other judges granted asylum in less than two percent of cases. Some judges even routinely deny asylum to applicants from countries such as Bosnia and Somalia, where conditions mean that most applicants are granted asylum. The INS does not evaluate judges on the basis of the rate at which they grant asylum, and do not keep records on how many of their decision are eventually overturned.

According to the Mercury News analysis, there was one factor that was key in determining how an Immigration Judge would rule according their legal background. Judges who worked in the private sector before being appointed granted asylum at a 50 percent higher rate than judges who had previously worked for the government. There are twice as many former government lawyers working as Immigration Judges as former private sector attorneys.

Another important factor was the gender of the judge. Ten of the 24 judges most likely to grant asylum were women, while the six judges least likely to grant asylum were men. Only three of the 24 judges least likely to grant asylum were women. The overwhelming majority of Immigration Judges – 72 percent – are men.

There were also substantial differences between individual offices. For example, most Sri Lankans who sought asylum in San Francisco won, while in similar cases filed in Los Angeles, most were denied asylum. Also, some judges appear to favor applicants from certain countries. For example, comparing two judges, one in Chicago and the other in New Jersey showed that while the New Jersey judge granted asylum in 69 percent of cases from Yugoslavia, the Chicago judge granted it in only 28 percent. On the other hand, the New Jersey judge granted asylum to only 39 percent of applicants from Somalia, while the Chicago judge granted it in 95 percent of cases from Somalia.

Until 1983, Immigration Judges were part of the INS. That year, a new agency within the Justice Department was created, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), to give Immigration Judges more of a sense of independence. Chief Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy says the focus of Immigration Judges is not on their approval rates, but on whether the case is correctly decided. Since his appointment in 1994, Creppy has worked to increase diversity among Immigration Judges. While this effort has changed the overall thinking of Immigration Judges, it has also created the sense of increasing arbitrariness in their rulings.

Adverse asylum decisions can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which reverses or remands for rehearing about 20 percent of cases.

Immigration Judges are not allowed to publicly comment on their decisions without permission from the EOIR, but in statements that have been authorized, they say that they often feel pressure not to rule a certain way, but to rule quickly on as many cases as possible.

The following tables on statistical breakdowns of Immigration Judge’s treatment of asylum cases is drawn from the San Jose Mercury News.

Disposition of asylum cases, 1995-1999

Year	Granted	Denied	Abandoned	Withdrawn	Total
1999	7,184	15,736	6,775	10,067	39,762
1998	7,252	20,160	3,744	15,605	46,761
1997	6,588	21,501	732	7,846	36,667
1996	5,159	25,025	686	3,416	34,286
1995	3,123	15,236	539	91	18,989
Total	29,306	97,658	12,476	37,025	176,465

Comparing immigration judges (statistics used for comparison omitted applications from countries whose nationals are seldom granted asylum)

Ten Most Lenient Judges		Ten Strictest Judges
Judge	City	Judge	City
Lisa Dornell	Baltimore	William A. Cassidy	Atlanta
Terry A. Bain	New York	William F. Jankun	New York
William Van Wyke	York, PA	Daniel A. Meisner	Newark, NJ
Victoria Ghartey	New York	Eugene Pugliese	Newark, NJ
William P. Greene, Jr.	Baltimore	Roy J. Daniel	Los Angeles
Carlos Cuevas	Chicago	Mackenzie Rast	Atlanta
Margaret McManus	New York	Nicole Kim	Newark, NJ
Edwin R. Hughes	Dallas	Noel Anne Ferris	New York
Joseph Vail	Houston	Thomas Fong	Los Angeles
Renetta Smith	Chicago	Donald V. Ferlise	Philadelphia

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