Immigration Judges Closed and Denied More Asylum Cases in March Than Any Month on Record
In a record-breaking month, immigration judges fast-tracked asylum denials at a record pace, raising questions about due process, the politicization of the courts, and the future of the asylum system.
The latest data on asylum decisions in immigration court1 paints a stark and deeply troubling picture. In March 2025, immigration judges decided 10,933 asylum cases—more than in any other single month since at least 2001. And of those cases, 76% were denied—also the highest denial rate on record for any month in more than two decades.
This is not an accident—this is a policy decision.
The Trump administration, which resumed in January 2025, appears to be fast-tracking asylum decisions with the clear goal of clearing the docket by simply denying as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
To put this in perspective: before this new surge, the previous high for total asylum case completions was 10,458 in February 2020. The highest denial rate before this administration was 74% from January 2019. These numbers are rising sharply and in tandem under this administration. Just six months ago, in September 2024, the denial rate was 62%, already high but not unprecedented. Now it’s jumped 14 percentage points in half a year.
Between explicit policy changes and implicit threats to get in line or get fired, judges on the whole seem to be following orders to deny, deny, deny. These changes have happened with breathtaking speed, too, since these data only reflect the first two full months (February and March) of the Trump administration. In short, Trump has already turned the ship of the immigration courts in his first 100 days.
Looking back at the Obama and early Trump years, high denial rates have occurred, but they never reached this scale, nor were they paired with such a massive volume of cases decided in a single month. In 2019, for example, denial rates hovered around 68–70%, once getting as high as 74%, but monthly completions stayed mostly below 9,000. The current administration has blown past those numbers, shoveling cases through the system faster than ever. For individual asylum seekers, this could reflect a lack of due process and an increasing disregard for the complexity of each person’s complex case.
I think we can all agree that we need a more efficient court system. (For a well-balanced approach, consider the Migration Policy Institute’s proposal here.) But in my view, the goal of a functioning asylum system should not be speed alone. Yes, the immigration court backlog is massive and represents a real challenge. But our response should not be to convert immigration court into a mass denial machine. Asylum decisions are often life-or-death matters. They involve deeply personal and often traumatic histories that require careful review. And they are already hard enough to win.
Record-high asylum denial rates are especially concerning when placed within the broader context of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy. People who are denied asylum are, in most cases, also issued removal orders, which fits squarely into a larger agenda of mass deportation. What makes this even more chilling is the administration’s practice of arresting people directly at court. So we’re not just talking about denying protection—we’re talking about punishing people for showing up to court, for following the legal process, and for trying to do things the right way.
The two graphs included here show the trend clearly. The first traces the sheer rise in monthly asylum case completions and the second shows the denial rate skyrocketing in parallel. Together, these two simple data points signal an aggressive shift in clearing out pending asylum cases by quickly denying them. If this continues over the next four years, the asylum system will be virtually unrecognizable from what we’ve seen over the past decade.
This could have ripple effects, although it might be too early to observe this in the data. If people begin to feel that going to court only leads to rapid denial and possible arrest, many may stop showing up altogether—not because they want to “evade” the authorities, but because they no longer believe in the legitimacy of the system. And that’s exactly how a legal system begins to lose legitimacy: when the process no longer looks like it can lead to fair outcomes.
It’s important to remember that the record-breaking denials we’re seeing in March 2025 only reflect the cases that actually made it to a hearing. As I wrote in a previous post, under new guidance from EOIR Acting Director Sirce Owen, many asylum seekers will now be blocked from even getting their day in court. A recent memo gives judges wide discretion to toss out asylum applications without a hearing if they’re deemed “legally insufficient”—even for minor technical issues. That means these historic denial numbers don’t even capture the full extent of what’s happening.
Nor do these numbers capture asylum seekers who are blocked from even getting to immigration courts due to border enforcement policies. Human Rights First and Refugees International published a new research report about asylum seekers’ experiences along the U.S.-Mexico border so far under the Trump administration. Interviews with migrants and their families revealed a pattern of denying migrants even a basic humanitarian screening known as a credible fear interview—even when migrants express fear of returning to their home country.
The report highlights a phenomenon that I hadn’t seen named before: “chain refoulement.” Under U.S. and international law, governments are not supposed to return people to places where they would face persecution, regardless of whether the have been granted asylum or not. This is the principle of non-refoulement. Under this administration, asylum seekers are also being sent to third countries—not just El Salvador, but Panama and Costa Rica, too—where they may then be returned to dangerous countries, possibly at the direction of the United States. This loophole of “chain refoulement” undermines humanitarian protection while outsourcing cruelty to other less powerful countries.
Read the entire report "‘This Is An Order From Trump’: Abuse, Expulsions, and Refoulement of People Seeking Asylum” for more information.
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Truly disturbing. Thank you for illuminating this phenomenon.
And interesting that under Trump 1, where the anti-asylum policy at EOIR took the form of rocket dockets and case law constricting AG decisions, the courts weren’t able to scale fast track denials to this extent. It makes me wonder whether something else is at work here (could the data be flawed or warped somehow?).
Also you note that “It’s important to remember that the record-breaking denials we’re seeing in March 2025 only reflect the cases that actually made it to a hearing.” Is that accurate? The TRAC data encompasses denials of all defensive asylum applications by EOIR doesn’t it? Would a pretermitted application be categorized differently? My understanding as a practitioner has always been that a pretermission functions as a denial on the merits of the application, albeit without the procedure it is normally due.
It seems like the Trump administration wants to make more "illegal immigrants" by skewing the chances of asylum so high that most will just not bother to file their application or show up for court. I assume then there will be plenty of cheap laborers to be taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers?