Same law, different courtroom: 59% of asylum cases granted in Sacramento, 0.6% in Baton Rouge
Published 2026-11-07 · By Pushbuild · Data: US Immigration Court Outcomes API – Asylum Grant Rates by Judge and Court
In fiscal 2025-26, Sacramento's immigration court granted 59.2% of decided asylum cases and Houston's 3.1% (549 grants, 17,431 denials). 4 judges with 300+ decisions granted none.
By court (1,000+ decisions)
| Court | Granted | Denied | Grant rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baton Rouge | 10 | 1,795 | 0.6% |
| Omaha | 42 | 2,740 | 1.5% |
| Atlanta | 175 | 5,417 | 3.1% |
| Houston | 549 | 17,431 | 3.1% |
| Conroe | 71 | 1,619 | 4.2% |
| Cleveland | 191 | 4,221 | 4.3% |
| Chelmsford | 964 | 2,344 | 29.1% |
| Boston | 1,697 | 3,617 | 31.9% |
| Otay Mesa | 405 | 819 | 33.1% |
| Las Vegas | 591 | 937 | 38.7% |
| San Francisco | 2,805 | 3,717 | 43.0% |
| Sacramento | 1,348 | 928 | 59.2% |
Judges at the extremes (300+ decisions)
| Judge | Court | Granted | Denied | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chen, Shuting | San Francisco | 265 | 102 | 72.2% |
| Adams, Lori | New York | 212 | 101 | 67.7% |
| Gordon, Louis A. | San Francisco | 213 | 156 | 57.7% |
| Badrinath, Vikram | Sacramento | 270 | 208 | 56.5% |
| Burman, Lawrence O. | Annandale | 168 | 142 | 54.2% |
| Gover, Erin | Boston | 352 | 304 | 53.7% |
| Wang, Lynn | Houston | 1 | 410 | 0.2% |
| Burns, John | New York | 2 | 1084 | 0.2% |
| Pobjecky, Artie | Houston | 0 | 366 | 0.0% |
| Garten, Danielle H. | Houston | 0 | 327 | 0.0% |
| Holliday, Carey R. | Baton Rouge | 0 | 710 | 0.0% |
| Nazaire, Karen | Newark | 0 | 478 | 0.0% |
Caveats
Courts hear different mixes of nationalities and detained cases, which explains part of the gap.
Sources
- Executive Office for Immigration Review, FOIA library, read through the Pushbuild US Immigration Court Outcomes API on 2026-11-07
Data as of 2026-11-07. Every figure in this post is in the table above and the CSV below.
Download the data behind this post: b2-asylum-grant-rate-by-court-fy25-26.csv · b2-asylum-grant-rate-by-judge-fy25-26.csv
Get this data
Every number in this post comes from the US Immigration Court Outcomes API – Asylum Grant Rates by Judge and Court. $0.0016 per row returned; every key gets $1 of free usage each month.
curl -X POST https://api.pushbuild.com/immigration-court-outcomes/run \
-H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"groupBy": ["fiscalYear", "court"], "application": "asylum", "fiscalYearFrom": 2025, "maxItems": 20}'Embed this chart
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