“Based on our research, we found that immigration judges vary widely in terms of how often they grant asylum. This certainly reflects the values and dispositions of individual judges, but it also reflects the fact that judges have very different caseloads depending on where they are in the country and the kind of docket to which they are assigned,” said Austin Kocher, a researcher with TRAC.

“Chinese nationals have had much higher rates of asylum success due to the way asylum law is written, so it makes sense that judges with large numbers of Chinese asylum cases are likely to have higher grant rates. On the other hand, detained immigrants have a much harder time applying for asylum successfully, so a judge who is assigned to a detained docket may grant asylum at a much lower rate than their peers,” Kocher said.