The latest immigration court data shows that the approval rate of asylum cases in the United States has dropped by half over the past twelve months compared to the previous year. According to the latest statistics released by the “Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse” (TRAC) of Syracuse University, in August this year, only 19.2% of asylum cases were approved by immigration judges, nearly halving from the 38.2% in August 2024.
A line graph released by TRAC covering the period from August 2023 to August 2025 presents two distinct opposite trends: the rate of asylum denial has been steadily increasing, reaching close to 80% in August 2025, while the approval rate has been steadily declining, dropping to 19.2% in August 2025.
Although the rhetoric of the Trump administration’s immigration policy was tougher, TRAC points out that the decrease in asylum approval rates did not start with the Trump administration. Towards the end of the Biden administration in 2024, the approval rates of individual judges in asylum hearings had already been decreasing. For example, from mid-2024 to the end of 2024, the approval rate dropped from 30% to about 23%. This downward trend continued after the Trump administration took over in 2025.
In April and May 2025, the number of asylum case completions soared to over 12,000 per month after the Trump administration accelerated case processing. This was much higher than the average of 6,000 to 7,000 cases per month during the Biden administration. However, with the significant reduction in the number of immigration judges by the Trump administration, the case load began to decline after June.
TRAC also released its annual “Immigration Judge Report,” detailing significant disparities in rulings among different judges. The report updated asylum decisions of every immigration judge nationwide over the past six years. It revealed that some judges had approval rates as high as 70-80%, while others had rates of less than 5%.
The long-standing issue of “different judges, different fates” has been criticized for years, and the latest data shows that this disparity has not improved under the current administration.
Experts indicate that the decrease in asylum approval rates may be related to several factors including: 1. The Trump administration’s accelerated push for asylum case reviews in 2025, reducing the processing time of cases; 2. The reopening of a large number of courts under the “expedited processing schedule”; 3. Reduction in the appointment of new judges, while concurrently cutting judge staff, leading to professional gaps; 4. The Trump administration’s significant acceleration of deportation procedures (including increasing denial rates, expediting case closures, and strengthening enforcement efforts) among others.