Asylum denial rates reach all-time high under Trump

Immigration judges are denying nearly all immigrant claims for asylum, while simultaneously plowing through asylum cases at an expeditious rate.A new analysis of asylum cases pending before the immigration courts, known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review, revealed that 94% of asylum claims — or roughly 13,500 immigrants’ claims — decided in June were denied compared to a 50% denial rate in June 2024, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at New York’s Syracuse University, a nonpartisan data research center that analyzes federal immigration statistical information.Just 6% of asylum claims — or 771 immigrants — were approved that month, versus 43% three years earlier. “More cases are now being decided as well. With the recent hiring of several hundred new Immigration Judges, asylum case dispositions have increased to record levels,” TRAC wrote in a report released Monday. “In April and May asylum case completions exceeded 13,000. They topped 14,000 in March and again in June 2026.”For the millions of immigrants who illegally entered the country via the southern border and sought asylum under former President Joe Biden and believed they would be able to remain, most will, in fact, be ordered deported, adding to the number of people that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can target for arrest and to the overall deportation numbers President Donald Trump hopes to achieve by 2029.As of December 2025, the immigration courts had 3.38 million cases before them.Those millions of cases are being decided by more than 600 judges nationwide after over 270 judges were fired or resigned in fiscal 2025 and 2026, which ran from October 2024 through the present, according to a March report by the Congressional Research Service.The 115 judges who departed in Trump’s first year represented the most departures since 2011 and came at a time when the court system was particularly overwhelmed.Unlike federal judges, who cannot be fired by the president, Trump has removed immigration judges who have had high asylum grant rates and sought to replace them with temporary military judges, as well as permanent judges.ICE BUYING ROBOT DOGS TO HELP IN TRUMP IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT OPERATIONSJudges must be lawyers and are appointed by the attorney general to their posts once hired. Their performance is judged over time by a chief immigration judge.The result gives the executive branch a way to affect immigration policy outside of Congress, which has the constitutional responsibility of setting immigration levels.