Two immigration judges in Texas have denied all assigned asylum cases

• Asylum Denial Rates Vary Among Judges in the U.S.
• Two Judges in Houston, Texas Deny All Assigned Asylum Cases
• Here Are the Details

Two immigration judges in Houston, Texas, have denied every asylum case assigned to them, totaling over 100 cases each.

This finding comes from a report published Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research center at Syracuse University.

The report examines asylum denial rates across 66 immigration courts in the United States over the past six years.

It highlights that Judges Monique Harris and Bruce Imbacuan of the Houston Immigration Court rejected all assigned asylum cases: 108 and 105, respectively.

Asylum Denial Rates Vary Among Judges in the U.S.

These figures underscore the stark disparities in asylum adjudication across immigration courts nationwide.

According to TRAC, asylum case outcomes vary significantly between judges, even within the same court.

In Houston, where 23 judges work, Judge Bao Nguyen denied 70.9% of the 403 cases he handled, while granting asylum in just 23.7%.

This wide variation in rulings reflects a broader trend in U.S. immigration courts, as reported by EFE.

San Francisco Immigration Court Highlights Disparities

The report highlights the San Francisco Immigration Court.

In it, asylum denial rates vary by several percentage points among judges in the same court.

For example, Judge Nathan Aina denied 91.6% of the 237 cases he handled, while his colleague Elisa Brasil granted asylum in 98.1% of cases, denying only 1.3%.

This disparity of more than 90 percentage points is one of the largest observed among U.S. immigration courts.

Disparities in Decisions to Grant Asylum

Immigration courts in New York, Arlington (Virginia), and Sacramento (California) also show significant differences in decisions, with denial rate variations of up to 86 percentage points.

TRAC’s report suggests that these differences cannot be explained solely by the quality of asylum applications but are influenced by factors like judges’ «pre-existing preferences.»

This indicates that U.S. asylum decisions are heavily shaped by the individual perspectives of the judges assigned to each case.

Judicial disparities are most common in courts with a higher number of judges, such as those in San Francisco and New York.

The report underscores the need for a deeper review of how asylum decisions are handled in the U.S.

These variations have profound implications for asylum seekers, who often face extreme vulnerability and persecution in their home countries.

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