Why Have Asylum Grant Rates Been Plummeting?

VolkAI December 4, 2025 Leave a Comment Imported News

Summary

Immigration judges’ asylum grant rates have been plummeting since the height of Biden-era bedlam. In the year and a half from February 2024 to August 2025, the grant rate fell from 51 percent to 19 percent.
Given rampant asylum fraud, the declining grant rate is a welcome development. But this leaves unaddressed the question of what was the cause. The question is especially interesting because the decline actually began in the spring of 2024, before President Trump’s second inauguration. The grant rate was 48 and 50 percent in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 and was still at 51 percent in February 2024. And then it began a sustained decline that greatly accelerated starting in July 2024. The rate fell to 33 percent by January 2025 and has fallen even further under President Trump to the lowest rate in three decades.
As to possibe causes:
- Some argue that the Biden administration’s May 2023 Circumvention of Lawful Pathways [CLAP] rule and May 2024 Securing the Border initiative are responsible. But immigration judge asylum decisions are usually rendered years after aliens’ apprehension. The great bulk of cases decided toward the end of the Biden administration were of aliens apprehended before the CLAP rule or Securing the Border had even gone into effect.
- It has been acknowledged that “the Biden administration’s parole policy allowed a lot of weak cases into the immigration court system”. None of the Biden administration’s unlawful categorical parole programs actually required aliens to demonstrate that they would be eligible for asylum. Thus, to the limited extent that Biden parolees actually applied for asylum and had their cases decided by the end of the Biden administration, this explanation is plausible.
- Some cite a rise in adverse credibility findings by immigration judges. But there is precious little other than credibility for immigration judges to go on, given high levels of fabricated claims and the fact that asylum claimants generally do not have to provide any corroborating evidence whatsoever.
- Some cite the Trump administration’s encouragement of pretermission — essentially, denial without a hearing — of legally insufficient applications for asylum. If so, this is a positive development. But it, of course, does not address the decline in grant rates under Biden.
- Some cite the changing makeup of the immigration judge corps resulting from resignations and firings during the Trump administration. However, claims of political or ideological firings are hardly new, and in fact were made against the Biden administration.
- Some claim that the Trump administration is encouraging ICE prosecutors to aggressively resist grants of asylum. If so, this is a positive development regarding aliens making bogus and unmeritorious asylum claims.
- Some claim that immigration judges are attempting to please the Trump administration. Well, it is remarkable how average grant rates vary by administration. The average grant rate was 27 percent during the bulk of the Clinton administration, 41 percent during the bulk of the George W. Bush administration, 53 percent during the bulk of the Obama administration, 31 percent during the bulk of the first Trump administration, 49 percent during the bulk of the Biden adminisration, and 22 percent from February to August 2025 during the second Trump administration. Clearly, the priorities of each administration must play some role in the shifting approval rates.
I propose two additional causes:
- First, panic by the Biden and then Kamala Harris campaigns over the upcoming 2024 presidential election: It appears that the Biden campaign went into panic mode over widespread public consternation over President Biden’s self-induced border disaster, resulting in a deal with the Mexican government to ruthlessly crack down on U.S.-bound migrants traversing through Mexico. Was the panic’s impact as evident in U.S. immigration courts? The asylum grant rate stood at 51 percent in February 2024. By June 2024, it had fallen to 46 percent. Then, following President Biden’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump on June 27, the grant rate’s decline accelerated greatly — falling to 44 percent in July and to 33 percent by this January.
- Second, the attorney general’s ability to force immigration judges to modify their interpretation of the asylum statute. In June 2018, President Trump’s attorney general made significant clarifications as to the meaning of key provisions of federal law’s asylum statute. In the six months leading up to these clarifications, the average asylum grant rate was 36 percent. In the six months following, the grant rate fell to 31 percent. Then, in June 2021, President Biden’s attorney general wholly undid these clarifications. In the four months leading up to the undoing, the grant rate was 36 percent. In the six months following, the grant rate jumped to 52 percent.The actions of attorneys general under Presidents Trump and Biden very likely played a role in the rapidly declining asylum grant rates during President Trump’s first administration — and in the rapidly increasing grant rates early in the Biden administration.
As Barack Obama once said, “Elections have consequences.” Among those consequences seem to be changes in immigration judges’ asylum grant rates — whether because of an administration’s approach to immigration or because of a campaign’s electoral panic.