Pandemic Still Hitting Immigration Courts Hard
Based on new research that TRAC published earlier this week, we found that the number of asylum cases decided each month remains low and has not really budged since the start of the pandemic.
Immigration attorney Matthew Hoppick wrote on his blog just yesterday that the Kansas City court, where practices, is still canceling Master Calendar hearings as a result of the pandemic. Hoppick goes on to discuss the new EOIR guidance on COVID earlier this month, saying that despite the memo, “the largest unanswered question now is whether individuals who have recently tested positive for COVID-19 will still be barred from entering the immigration courts.”
These findings were just a small part of a much larger report about the current state of asylum cases in the immigration courts, which can be accessed here.
Other highlights from the report—which I will go into in greater depth in the next week—include:
the asylum grant rate for cases decided in FY 2021 has increased specifically during the Biden administration, but the total number of cases is a fraction of even last year’s numbers
access to an attorney continues to make an enormous difference in terms of who gets asylum
we also found significant differences in success rates between affirmative and defensive cases, although we also note that the fraction of asylum cases that started out as affirmative have declined dramatically in recent years
Follow me on Twitter or Substack for more daily data and insights into the current state of our immigration system.
