Nearly 70% of asylum claims that U.S. immigration judges ruled on in the government’s fiscal 2019 were denied, continuing a sharp uptick from 45% in the early 2010s, according to a nongovernmental tracker.
Data released Wednesday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data research center at Syracuse University, showed federal judges decided 67,406 requests for asylum. Of that number, judges found 46,735 claims were illegitimate and that those asylum-seekers had not suffered or were not in fear of persecution for race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. That denial rate has quadrupled from less than 10,000 in fiscal 2014. The fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.
Judges granted protection in the remaining 19,831 cases of migrants who arrived at the United States-Mexico border and claimed a credible fear of returning home, double the number approved five years ago. It’s not clear how many total migrants sought asylum in 2019.
The total decided asylum cases represents just one-quarter of all immigration-related cases judges ruled on. More than 400,000 people who arrived at the border from countries other than Mexico and Canada and were with a family member would have been able to claim having a credible fear of being deported, which commences the asylum process.
The average asylum applicant who went before a judge last year waited 1,421 days, or nearly four years. Eight-five percent of approved requests had outside legal help. Chinese citizens made up the largest nationality of people whose requests were granted, at 3,600.
“With rare exception, asylum-seekers whose cases were decided in FY 2019 also showed up for every court hearing. In fact, among nondetained asylum-seekers, 99 out of 100 (98.7%) attended all their court hearings,” TRAC wrote in its analysis.
In mid-2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions made it more difficult for Central American families to seek asylum at the U.S. border. The following year, nearly half of people arrested for illegally crossing the southern border were Central American families, the highest rate or percentage in history.
