ANALYSIS | How did immigration courts go from approving half of asylum cases under Biden to denying 94% under Trump?

Data published Aug. 31 by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) show that 94% of asylum applications were denied in June, reflecting an increase not only in denials but in completed immigration court decisions. 2026 also marked an all-time low for asylum grants, with only 5.5% of asylum applicants (771 individuals) actually being granted asylum in June.

During the summer of 2023, under then-President Joe Biden, more than 50% of asylum applications were granted. The grant rate began to decline gradually by October that year, but Biden administration policies still released illegal aliens who claimed asylum into the U.S. to await their court hearings, rather than keeping them in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers.

Under Biden, fewer than 8,000 asylum cases were completed monthly, while foreign nationals still awaiting decisions were permitted to roam the U.S. interior. Within President Donald Trump’s first month back in office, more than 10,000 asylum cases were completed, with the vast majority seeing asylum denied. The number of completed cases has hovered around 14,000 monthly since early 2026.

Trump has also dramatically reshaped the executive branch’s immigration courts, a key factor in the skyrocketing rate of both asylum case decisions and asylum denials. According to TRAC and Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) numbers, 279 immigration judges either quit or were fired after Trump returned to office in 2025, representing more than one- third (38%) of immigration judges employed at the end of fiscal year 2024.

The Trump administration subsequently hired 192 judges and drafted more than 50 temporary judges to help decide cases, clear the asylum backlog that piled up under Biden, and streamline the removal process. More than half (57%) of the 743 immigration judges currently deciding cases were appointed by Trump.

TRAC noted in its report that even many of the immigration judges appointed prior to Trump’s return to office increased their rates of asylum denials.

The Biden-era effect

Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and a former immigration judge, told Zeale News that while the new composition of the immigration courts is one factor in the rise in asylum denials, one of the most critical factors is the “massive” increase of in absentia removal orders judges have had to issue.

In the first nine months of fiscal year 2026, Arthur observed, immigration judges issued 254,680 asylum decisions. While only a handful (2.8%) of cases resulted in asylum being granted, more than one- third (35.2%) were denials. An even higher share (36.2%) of asylum cases, however, were labeled “abandoned.”

Of the 92,081 “abandoned” cases, 90,288 resulted in in absentia removal orders. In other words, more than one- third of asylum applicants were caught attempting to illegally gain entry to the U.S., claimed asylum, and then failed to appear for their court hearings. According to Arthur, the steep rise of in absentia removal orders in asylum cases is an “inevitable” result of the Biden administration’s parole policies, responsible for releasing millions of illegal aliens into the U.S.

“Given how Biden’s Department of Homeland Security ignored federal detention mandates, rarely subjected migrants to expedited removal at the Southwest border and ports, and instead released millions of illegal aliens on the (unreasonable) assumption they were all asylum seekers, a new record for asylum denials should come as no surprise,” Arthur said.

“Asylum denial rates have undoubtedly reached record highs, and a change in the immigration judges hearing those claims plainly was a factor,” he continued. “But denial rates were bound to rise regardless, given the hundreds of thousands of unscreened ‘asylum seekers’ Biden’s DHS waved into the United States who are only now showing up — or failing to appear — in immigration court today.”

Why asylum?

Another factor yielding the higher number of asylum case denials is the rampant fraud plaguing the system for years. According to a report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), many illegal aliens are “coached” on how to claim asylum if caught entering the U.S. illegally. These fraudulent claims “clog the system and deny legitimate asylum seekers a swift adjudication of their claims,.” FAIR stated.

The Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) is tasked with identifying fraudulent asylum claims, but the agency, a component of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), has limited personnel, so that a swollen backlog of asylum claims becomes increasingly difficult to comb through.

Shortly after Trump’s return to the White House, USCIS Director Joe Edlow confirmed that the Biden administration had made no efforts to identify fraudulent asylum claims and allowed the asylum claim backlog to triple, making FDNS’ task of identifying and dismissing fraudulent cases a laborious one.

“We had about 450,000 cases that were pending on the asylum active docket,” Edlow said, referring to the end of the first Trump administration. “When I got back, there were over 1.5 million cases.”

According to Edlow, Biden administration officials in DHS “weren’t doing much” to identify fraud in the asylum system and instead adopted a “get-to-yes mentality” when processing asylum claims.

One feature that makes the asylum process such a target for fraud is what Arthur called the “work authorization magnet.” Illegal aliens are ineligible for work authorization under federal law, but paroled aliens can apply for legal work authorization while awaiting adjudication of their claims, even before their claims are determined by an immigration court to be legitimate.

“That ‘work authorization magnet,’ coupled with the opportunity to live and work in the United States indefinitely — or at least until ICE could find them — drew untold numbers of aliens to come here illegally under Biden and apply for a protection (asylum) they never intended to receive or pursue,” Arthur said.

Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told Zeale News that the asylum system attracts fraud because it is “low risk, high reward.”

“Allowing asylum applicants to receive quick work authorization merely for submitting an asylum application is reckless policy,” she said. “An applicant for any immigration benefit, including asylum, should not be eligible for work authorization unless and until the underlying immigration benefit application is granted. That would prevent many fraudulent and frivolous asylum applications.”

Jessica Vaughan, CIS director of policy studies, told Zeale News that the increased asylum denials are not a surprise.

“These statistics are the inevitable result of the Biden catch and release policies at the border, under which more than two million illegal migrants were allowed to enter and given the opportunity to claim a fear of return, enabling them to get a work permit and several years to remain here while their cases creeped through the already-backlogged immigration courts,” she said.

“The migrants allowed to enter under Biden knew (because they were coached by smugglers or friends who came before them) that following their release after crossing illegally they should appear at an ICE office near their destination, claim fear of return, and apply for a work permit, thus laundering their status to be able to stay until their case is heard years later,” she continued. “In the meantime, they can work, have a U.S. citizen child, get a driver's license, and collect welfare benefits.”

The Trump administration’s policies, such as hiring more immigration judges and requiring judges to “apply the letter of the law” in dealing with asylum cases, Vaughan said, have been coupled with ICE executing orders of removal and targeting fraudsters who claimed asylum for the sake of work authorization.

“These statistics mean that the Trump administration is making great progress in restoring the integrity of the immigration system by cutting off asylum abuse as a way to stay in the country,” she concluded. “Congress should codify these changes to prevent another president from facilitating this abuse of our humanitarian immigration programs.”

When claiming asylum, a foreign national does not need to present any real evidence of his fear of persecution, only his own testimony. Asylum officers are authorized to reject initial asylum claims deemed not credible, but the claimant can then appeal to an immigration judge and, eventually, the Board of Immigration Appeals to defer the asylum officer’s removal orders.

Given the low standard of evidence required for asylum claims, Ries said that fraud is not only more common but also less surprising.

“The claims of persecution are often similar from the same countries, which means a case often comes down to credibility of the applicant,” she said. “Protection from persecution should be held to higher standards, not be watered down to achieve feel-good, artificially high numbers.”