Asylum grant rates have plummeted to historic lows since President Donald Trump took office, and those figures continue to fall as the administration takes a wrecking ball to the immigration courts.
The Trump administration has found a legal way to ensure that asylum claims by immigrants who illegally entered the United States are largely denied, resulting in their deportation. The result has dramatically cut asylum approval rates to single-digits from nearly 50% during the Biden administration, according to the latest figures.
For the millions of people who entered the country via the southern border and sought asylum under former President Joe Biden and believed they would be able to remain, most will, in fact, be ordered deported, adding to the number of people that ICE can target for arrest and to the overall deportation numbers Trump hopes to achieve by 2029.
All of this is occurring through the immigration courts, which operate independently of other courts and behind closed doors, unlike immigration arrests seen on the streets. By swapping out roughly one in four judges with high asylum approval rates, the Trump administration is filling the bench with decision-makers who align with its tough approach to illegal immigration.
What is immigration court?
Immigration courts are separate from other courts, meaning judges there decide only federal immigration matters, not criminal or civil cases.
Immigration courts are administrative, not judicial, courts. Their purpose is to hear cases involving non-U.S. citizens whom the government seeks to remove from the U.S.
Although other federal courts fall under the judicial branch of government, immigration courts fall under the executive branch because the Justice Department’s Executive Office manages them for Immigration Review.
The office has 60 courts nationwide where judges will conduct removal hearings, bond hearings over whether a defendant should be detained, and credible fear reviews during the asylum-seeking process.
The EOIR requested $899 million in its fiscal 2027 budget request to fund approximately 5,300 staff.
Trump cuts judges
As of December 2025, the immigration courts had 3.38 million cases before them, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at New York’s Syracuse University, a nonpartisan data research center that analyzes federal immigration statistical information.
Margy O’Herron, senior fellow for liberty and national security at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, notes that new cases added to the dockets from between fiscal 2022 and 2024, when a record-high number of illegal immigrants were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, are still being felt by the court, given that cases take years to resolve.
“EOIR continues to manage a substantial pending caseload. The high volume in new case filings … still represents the agency’s most significant workload challenge,” O’Herron wrote in a recent analysis.
Those millions of cases are being decided by more than 600 judges nationwide after more than 200 judges were fired or resigned in 2025 and Q1 of 2026, according to a March 2026 report by the Congressional Research Service. The 115 judges who departed in Trump’s first year represented the most departures seen since 2011 and came at a time when the court was particularly overwhelmed.
Unlike federal judges, who cannot be fired by the president, Trump has removed immigration judges who have had high asylum grant rates and sought to replace them with temporary military judges, as well as permanent judges.
Judges must be lawyers and are appointed by the attorney general to their posts once hired. Their performance is judged over time by a chief immigration judge.
The result gives the executive branch a way to affect immigration policy outside of Congress, which has the constitutional responsibility of setting immigration levels.
Getting into court
The immigration process begins when a person determined to be illegally present in the United States is encountered by federal law enforcement at the border or inside the country.
The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for enforcing immigration law through apprehending, detaining, and removing illegal immigrants, while the Department of Justice handles the legal process.
DHS agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection is assigned to the nation’s borders, while U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement primarily works within the country. Whether a person is apprehended while crossing the border illegally or only caught once inside the country, he or she will be turned over to ICE to be detained while going through immigration proceedings.
Federal law enforcement may release an illegal immigrant into the country rather than keep that person in detention. Each person is given a Notice to Appear in immigration court, which the DHS has filed to signal that the person has violated immigration law and should be removed, initiating legal proceedings.
The government attorneys bringing the federal charge against the defendant, or illegal immigrant, work for ICE’s Principal Legal Advisor office. Attorneys are hired through a competitive process and are nonpartisan, many having worked for the office for decades.
Unlike U.S. citizens facing criminal proceedings, immigrants are not provided legal counsel for their immigration proceedings and must pay out of pocket for a lawyer.
Once in court
ICE may release someone in federal custody to remain in the U.S. during court proceedings and place them in a program known as Alternatives to Detention. The program uses ankle monitors and a phone app to track and communicate with immigrants rather than indefinitely detaining people who are deemed a low threat.
Once a Notice to Appear has been filed with the court, the defendant is informed of the date to appear at a regional immigration court for the first hearing.
“You, the alien (and your lawyer if you have one), will present your case and applications for immigration,” ICE states in a rundown online about court proceedings. “The government lawyer will be the opposing party relief and protection to show the judge why you should against you in immigration court.
“The immigration judge will generally enforce the rules of the court, make sure that the process is fair, consider all the evidence, and eventually make a final decision about whether you may stay in the United States or will be removed,” ICE’s website states.
Immigrants may argue that they should not be removed from the U.S. after illegally entering or overstaying a visa on the basis that they have or are seeking immigration relief, including asylum, temporary protected status, a family-based petition, or a special immigrant juvenile visa, among other protections.
It is incumbent on each immigrant to prove to the court that they should not be removed.
“The burden of proof is on the government to show an immigrant is removable in cases in which the immigrant entered the United States after inspection by an immigration officer, such as with a visa or as a refugee,” O’Herron said.
“If an immigrant entered without inspection — by crossing the border between ports of entry, for example — the immigrant has the burden of proof of establishing that they should be admitted,” O’Herron said. “Regardless of how immigrants enter the United States, they have the burden of proof of establishing eligibility for relief.”
Reaching a conclusion
Judges will make their decisions based on immigration laws set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
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A judge may give a decision at the hearing or mail a decision months later. If an application for protection is denied, the judge is likely to initiate deportation. Even if the judge approves the application, the government lawyer could appeal it.
Immigrants whose cases are denied have 30 days to appeal the decision to the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals.