Asylum denials in Philadelphia’s immigration court have spiked through the first seven months of President Donald Trump’s administration, according to an Inquirer analysis of the latest available government data.

The court has denied 74% of asylum claims in the first seven months of Trump’s second term, compared with a 61% denial rate during the last seven months of the Biden administration, mirroring national trends.

The data were published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data gathering and research organization that regularly acquires and analyzes such data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency responsible for overseeing the nation’s immigration courts system.

And it’s not just that denials are up: The volume of cases has risen substantially as well. The Philadelphia court heard twice as many cases over Trump’s first seven months, compared with Biden’s final seven: 1,059 vs. 513.

Local immigration attorneys say that’s no coincidence.

“Absolutely. They’re pushing cases to go forward,” said Brennan Gian-Grasso, founding partner of Philadelphia’s Gian-Grasso & Tomczak Immigration Law Group, when asked whether the two trends may be connected. “Additionally — and I think this is probably the big difference — prosecutorial discretion.”

Under the Biden administration, Gian-Grasso said, immigration officials often gave asylum seekers who may not have necessarily qualified for asylum the opportunity to remain in the United States by putting a case on hold or otherwise allowing individuals to continue to stay in the United States so long as they did not have a criminal record or other derogatory characteristics.

“That’s gone,” said Gian-Grasso. “Every case is going forward now.”

The administration has been open about its efforts to push cases through the system. Last month, EOIR issued a news release trumpeting a shrinking backlog of immigration court cases — claiming a decrease of 450,000 pending cases since Trump’s inauguration. TRAC data indicate a slight decrease for Philadelphia’s backlog since the start of the current fiscal year last October.

Emma Tuohy, a partner at Philadelphia’s Landau, Hess, Simon, Choi & Doebley and a recent past president of the national American Immigration Lawyers Association, suggested the rising number of decisions and denial rates were connected to another recent trend: surging arrests and detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Denials in detained settings have always been higher,” Tuohy said, explaining that attorneys face particular obstacles when representing detained clients.

The Inquirer reported in August that the number of people detained in ICE custody in New Jersey and Pennsylvania was up about 68% in July compared with figures at the start of Trump’s administration.

Historically, asylum denial rates are vastly higher for those individuals who were in custody at the time a decision was rendered in their cases. Since the start of the 2000 fiscal year, about 99% of detained individuals in Philadelphia’s immigration court were denied asylum, compared with 63% of individuals who were detained at some point but later released and 58% of those who were never detained since the start of fiscal 2000. Similar, though smaller, gaps exist nationally.

“(Cases) move much, much quicker — within just a couple months — as opposed to non-detained cases which can take a few years. It’s a much shorter timeline to put together extensive documentation and it’s obviously quite a bit harder to work with clients, given they are not as accessible as normal,” said Tuohy. “It’s much harder for individuals in detention to collect documents, to call people they need to speak with, to prepare their statements, to request letters from witnesses. We’re relying mostly on families that are outside and they may not have all the information nor access.”

Officials at EOIR did not respond to requests for comment.

A flurry of policy changes have made winning cases tougher

The substantial increase in denial rates since Trump’s inauguration has been accompanied by a succession of policy changes at EOIR.

The first came in a February memo issued by Sirce Owen, the Trump-appointed acting director of EOIR. Unlike typical federal judges, immigration court judges are not independent judicial branch officials but executive branch employees within EOIR. The directive rescinded a 2023 memo meant to better ensure that individuals in asylum proceedings are provided with adequate interpretation and translation services.

Gian-Grasso explained that access to interpretive services can be critical to an asylum seeker’s ability to properly plead their case.

“Just in my own experience, I’ve had clients who could not speak a word of English — and were illiterate even in their own language — but in translation during testimony could very, very effectively and intelligently articulate their fear of return to their country and their asylum case,” he said.

Gian-Grasso worried the policy shift would put some asylum seekers at a severe disadvantage.

“Limiting that kind of access dooms asylum cases because if you can’t tell your story, what does the judge have to go on?” he said.

Historically, asylum denial rates are significantly higher for those individuals who don’t speak English. In Philadelphia’s immigration court, about 62% of non-English speakers were denied asylum, compared with 51% of English speakers, since the start of fiscal 2000.

Attorneys have cited a second memo, issued in April, as likely to have an even greater effect on asylees.

That memo essentially encouraged immigration judges to order an asylum seeker removed before providing them with an opportunity for a full hearing of their case — an action known as pretermission — if a judge believes that an applicant has failed to present sufficient corroborating evidence at the outset of their proceedings.

Tuohy described the practical effect of the policy as telling judges to throw out cases over paperwork errors.

“These (cases) are not being pretermitted because there’s not corroborating evidence or there’s not an affidavit or there’s a credibility issue where they don’t believe a person’s story on the merits,” Tuohy said. “This is just because someone has not fully filled out a form.”

Gian-Grasso said the new memo will likely be particularly difficult on individuals navigating the immigration system without an attorney.

“Asylum is highly technical. It’s very difficult to put together an asylum case,” Gian-Grasso said. “You can have a valid asylum case, but if you don’t know how to put it together legally — now judges are being told to look to pretermit in these situations.”

Historically, asylum denial rates are markedly higher for those individuals who don’t have access to an attorney. In Philadelphia’s immigration court, about 82% of asylum applicants without representation were denied asylum, compared with 57% of those who did. An even larger gap exists nationally.

Denial rates vary by president, and, locally, by judge

While recent denial rates are the highest on record, increases and decreases in the rate of asylum denials are nothing new.

While Philadelphia’s recent denial rate marks the highest since data became available a quarter century ago, rates have fluctuated over time, with notable shifts depending on who’s in the White House.

In addition to notable partisan gaps, the data reveal another factor in success for an asylum speaker: the judge assigned to the case.

From the 2019 through 2024 fiscal years, the Philadelphia judge with the lowest denial rate denied asylum in 33% of cases, compared with the judge with the highest denial rate, 85%.

Tuohy expressed frustration over that chasm in case outcomes.

“There’s just absolutely no way that those judges are being assigned such fundamentally different cases that their grant rates should be so different so unfortunately yes, it makes a huge difference what judge you get assigned to,” Tuohy said.

Gian-Grasso agreed, arguing it’s one more reason that asylees without an attorney are penalized.

“You know as an attorney what you’re getting when you go in with these judges and how to structure your case,” said Gian-Grasso. “But, again, that goes back to our (unrepresented asylum seekers). They have no idea and they’re similarly disadvantaged for having this lack of knowledge at the end of the day.”

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